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Next UCLA Head Coach Search: Potential Red Flags

Every team except Penn State has a search process for a new head football coach at some point.  Hopefully, ours will come sooner (after this season) than later.

For the most part, if memory serves, we were excited by RN's arrival as head coach.  That excitement turned out to be premature.

Are there things we should look for next time around, to know if we are on the right track this time around?  A couple of preliminary indicators after the jump, for your consideration...

Looking back at prior hires, the first warning sign would be a protracted process, with potential hires saying "no thanks" and leaving us with our 3rd or 4th choice.  My recollection is that this was the situation with Toledo.

Second warning sign- promote from within.  Unfortunately, the state of the program is such that we need a much bigger change in culture than anybody could provide who has been part of this program in recent years.

Third warning sign- hiring somebody whose only head coaching experience is maintaining a successful program which they have inherited.  In hindsight, RN did not build programs at Colorado and Washington- he ran out what he was given.  Whoever is our next coach will need to build from scratch.  RN was not able to do this after Dorrell's mess.  Somebody will have to do this after RN's mess.

Fourth warning sign- giving undue preference to an alum. I would much rather have somebody with no connections, and who has a track record of resurrecting a failed program, instead of having somebody who is hired because he was part of UCLA's prior success, but has no turnaround experience.


Fifth warning sign- new head coach is not given free reign to hire his own staff.

Others will probably disagree with some or all of these warning signs.  I would like to see other suggestions as to what we should look for. But my guess is that these signs, or others like them, will rear their ugly heads, unless there is a total makeover in how we go about hiring new head football coaches at Morgan Center. 

Would love to be wrong.  Hope springs eternal.  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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