Avoiding Disaster

by jjreicher on Dec 21, 2007 9:24 AM PST

UCLA CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT HIRE ANY COACH TO A LONG-TERM DEAL, UNLESS THAT COACH IS A PROVEN CHAMPION.

This is my belief. Give me a chance to explain.

I personally am not thrilled with any of the current candidates out there, including Bellotti who everyone is going absolutely bonkers over. Count the number of championships the current candidates have won as head coaches...0. Now, if you tell me that UCLA has the opportunity to hire a Spurrier, Erickson, etc., I'm all for throwing a long-term big-money deal. But that is not what we are dealing with. Even Bellotti is a decent choice at best. Four straight bowl losses, a .614% WP (good, not stellar), and don't forget he lost to KARL this year and he recruited a boy from the Leaf family--okay, none of this worth crying over, but it's also not completely meaningless. He has 0 championships and has had what is really an up-and-down career. He could potentially be good, but he's not the caliber I'm looking for at this point in his career.

I'm NOT saying not to hire him. Just this: no matter who UCLA hires, it should be a 2-year deal at the longest. Even if this means losing out on a few of these characters. Here's what I will not stand--signing one of them to a big 7 year deal (as recommended by some of my fellow BN'ers) in blind hope for a real winner. Bottom line is, no one great is available right now. I would rather go with a risky, short-term hire and hope for a great coach becoming available next year than to choose one from this marginal pile and give him half a decade to become a champ.

I know I'll take some flak for this but here goes: I would rather have Walker in a 1-year deal than Bellotti for 5+. Bellotti has proven to be a good, solid head coach, but nothing more. If we take him and he struggles for 2 years (look at his career, this is not impossible), we'll be stuck with 3 on his contract and we'll be even worse off than we are now. If we take someone else (or Bellotti, but I can't imagine he'd accept it) for a short deal and it doesn't work out, so what! During that time we can find a real head coach and we will not have lost out because we will have no long-term dedication to someone.

I'm just afraid that as Bruin fans we are preparing ourselves to settle with what we get. Bellotti is interesting, but not godly. Neuheisel is pretty scummy. Another BN fave, Mariucci, has proven in his long career that he knows how to lose. Golden is a joke.

You may say I'm naive. Very few coaches have won championships. But you know what, count how many in our own division have won one, and you'll see my head isn't entirely in the clouds.

My vote goes to a 1-2 year deal, and I don't care who it is. If we can ink Bellotti for 2 years, I'm right behind it. But if it's going to take a long deal, I'm not interested.

Still hoping for the best,
GO BRUINS!

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.

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Comments

Market dynamics

There are no good or very good coaches who will sign such a deal. Nor should they. The market for good coaches with upside potential dictates you give them a decent sized contract, so they are financially protected if things don't work out.

That's just the way it is. No decent coach would ever sign a two year contract. He doesn't have to.

"when you've seen how big the world is, how can you make due with this?"

by silverlakebruin on Dec 21, 2007 9:32 AM PST reply actions

Makes no sense...

why would you sign coaches to less than a 5 year deal (4 years + redshirt)? what recruit would come play for a coach that is essentially a lame duck coach? That is nonense.

And name the amount of coaches in the country who have won championships AND make less than 2 million/year (roughly what we can pay)? At first glance, there's

Joe Pa, Bobby Bowden, Lloyd Carr, Les Miles - ALL NO WAY IN HELL

Butch Davis, Erickson, Spurrier - 2 have no reason to leave on their first year

So your left with 1 person in the country that meets your criteria!

Lets be real, Beliotti could have been the 2nd person that meets your criteria if Dixon didn't get hurt. Hes championship caliber.

by kidro2001 on Dec 21, 2007 9:34 AM PST reply actions

Dick Vermeil

nuf sed

by charnaw on Dec 21, 2007 9:43 AM PST reply actions

too old..

..and not interested.

by whp68 on Dec 21, 2007 3:59 PM PST up reply actions

Long term contracts

are for the benefit of recruiting. It shows the recruits that the university has a long-term committment to the coach, whom the recruit is considering playing for. It's an appearance thing, and is a recruiting disadvantage if you don't do it, which is why UCLA needs to do it. You may not like it, but that's just the way it is.

My choices:

Jones
Leach
Mendenhall
Bellotti
Neu

by bornagainbruin on Dec 21, 2007 9:43 AM PST reply actions

I am with you except

I put Leach and Mendenhall above Jones.

Leach is my number 1.

Bellotti, on that list is my number 4, just like he is yours.

sjh

by Class of 66 on Dec 21, 2007 10:10 AM PST up reply actions

Proven Champion?

What do you mean by proven champion? Belotti has won 2 Pac-10 titles (one outright and one tie) and would have played for a national championship had the BCS computers not gone haywire over the Big 12 3rd place team, Nebraska.

Are you saying we cannot give a coach a 5-year deal unless he's won a national championship? Tressel, Meyer, Miles, Carroll, Saban, Stoops, Brown, Coker, Bowden and Fulmer were not proven champions when hired, but all of them (except Miles who's playing for his first one next month) are champions now. I would be shocked if any of these current champion coaches who were hired in the past 10 years did not get a 5-year deal when hired. (Times were different when Fulmer and Bowden started.)

Let's look at this list of currently unemployed proven champions (going back to 1988): Lloyd Carr, Lou Holtz, Bill McCartney, Bobby Ross. So, you'd support a 5-year deal for one of those guys, or for Spurrier, if we could lure him out of South Carolina. But no one else. I don't want any of those guys, except maybe Spurrier, who hasn't won even a conference title since 2000.

In addition, has any proven champion ever been hired and then produced a championship at another school? (I can go back 20 years and find none in that time.)

Finally, in today's market, no head coach can recruit with a deal for less than 4-5 years. You need that if you want to tell recruits you'll be around when they graduate. A coach with a one-year deal is a lame-duck. You cannot run a program with a lame duck head coach. It's suicide.

So, hiring a proven champion is not a realistic option, and hiring a proven champion looks like it has not yielded another championship at the new school. Moreover, if we hire someone for one year, we will get annihilated in recruiting (Petey: why go to UCLA, Walker only has one year left. He's gone.)

We could structure a deal with a low buyout so that if it doesn't work out after two years it won't cost us a ton of money, but we cannot hire a guy on less than a 5-year deal and expect to be successful.

by BruinsRule on Dec 21, 2007 9:46 AM PST reply actions

Wow

The reaction of some Bruins to Bellotti really has me wondering if the people who say most UCLA fans think far more highly of their program than it actually is are correct.

A one year contract... are you insane? Who the hell would sign that? You can't properly install your system. You can't properly recruit. You can't bring in your own guys. You can't buy a freaking house in town. It's better to take the year off and let your legend grow until a team which APPRECIATES you comes calling. Because one will.

Tressel and Spurrier and Meyer are not coming to Westwood. You can't treat this like some dichotomy where the guy is a Hall of Fame coach or he's garbage. Bellotti might not be Tressel but he's also not garbage. He's a proven winner. That's what we wanted. It's not settling.

by njbruin on Dec 21, 2007 11:52 AM PST reply actions

Lame

No offense.

by SinnerBoy 99 on Dec 21, 2007 12:18 PM PST reply actions

You would rather have Walker?

Yes, you will take flak for this.

Think about it for a second. Now think about it again.

Do you really want that inexperienced, unproven, average-at-best coach to lead UCLA. I don't want him as the interim coach or the outerim coach or anything else. I'm not all that hot on him for any position on the staff.

I assume this was just a weak moment, brought on by the anxiety of the coaching search. You are forgiven for that momentary lapse of judgment.

by Fox 71 on Dec 21, 2007 12:55 PM PST reply actions

Bellotti's WP

It's actually .671, which is higher than Donahue's .665, and is at Oregon.

by SuperBruinMan on Dec 21, 2007 1:04 PM PST reply actions

It Isn't The Length Of The Contract

The term of the contract is less important than the buyout provisions. The more successful the coach, the more he risks in leaving his current job. Therefore, the more guarantees he will ask for in his contract. The market dictates multi-year contracts. How much it will cost the school to get out of the contract is a much more important consideration.

by Bruin77 on Dec 21, 2007 1:08 PM PST reply actions

Can we afford a champion?

Will the AD throw out the money to get a real coach, that is the question.

by joeb @ Bruins Nation on Dec 21, 2007 1:50 PM PST reply actions

The indications are that he will

and I think that was made clear when he went after Bellotti.

sjh

by Class of 66 on Dec 21, 2007 2:33 PM PST up reply actions

The coach's salary

...is set by the University, and I believe, has to be approved by the Regents. DG may offer a coach a particular deal up to the University's preapproved ceiling, but it's not up to DG alone as to what that ceiling is. In fact, DG is probably (and should be) pushing the University to raise that ceiling as much as possible to give him the most bargaining room.

So that question is more like: Will UCLA throw out the money to get a real coach?

greg in denver

by gbruin on Dec 21, 2007 6:23 PM PST up reply actions