Lessons in Incompetence: UCLA's Dan Guerrero Gets Big Money for Mediocre Results
by Bellerophon on Oct 7, 2011 9:02 AM PDT
in UCLA Athletics
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How would you feel if you got paid handsomely in exchange for mediocre performance at work? Wouldn't that be awesome? What if you could be like Peter Gibbons in Office Space and advance by phoning it in? No accountability, no fear of consequences, no need to perform, but sit back, collect a check, and do just enough to get by.
If your name is Dan Guerrero, then that is your life. Your reward for presiding over the worst period in UCLA football history, for promoting a diseased culture of mediocrity, and tone-deaf, ham-handed, pathetic attempts to engage and placate an upset and disgruntled fan base, is the nice princely sum of $688,296. No, not in one payment, but as an annual salary.
Think about that ladies and gentlemen: Dan Guerrero, arguably one of the worst athletic directors in the history of modern UCLA athletics, makes $688,296. What's even more laughable is that ol' Danny boy is the, wait for it, the highest paid athletic director in the Pac-12.
WTF.
ESPN's Ted Miller reports, using USA Today's athletic director salary database, that Dan Guerrero is the highest-paid athletic director in the conference. Wow. Maybe for an encore, UCLA bureaucrats can get Senora Ross on the payroll and make her the highest paid faculty member on all UC campuses. Or, better yet, perhaps we can get UCLA bureaucrats to take over the NFL and make Ryan Leaf the highest paid football player in league history.
Wow. I would have no qualms with paying our athletic director a handsome sum if the job performance dictated it. Instead Dan Guerrero has turned his mismanagement of the athletic department into enough cash to buy eight new Porsche 911 Carrera sport cars per year with change to spare.
Here's some of the low-lights of Dan's Reign of Error:
- Dan Guerrero initiates a newsletter, calls it a "blog", refuses to allow UCLA fans to post questions publicly, and hand-picks the softball questions to answer, in a manner that proves Dan and Morgan Center have zero understanding of how to engage with the fan base using "new media."
- UCLA football, under Dan's watch, has gone from a conference power and nationally prominent program, with regular Rose Bowl appearances, into the laughing stock of the conference, causing UCLA football to slide into total irrelevancy.
- Guerrero's tone-deaf public statements are embarrassing at best, and insulting to the intelligence of the UCLA fan base at worst, but more damning is that Guerrero and Morgan Center's failure to grasp that they have become an easy target for open mockery.
- Dan Guerrero is responsible for the diseased culture of mediocrity that has infected Morgan Center, demonstrating a complete inability to manage a top-tier Division I athletic program with a BCS conference football program.
- Under Dan's watch, UCLA football has managed to hit an all-time low, with sagging attendance at the Rose Bowl and embarrassing defeats at home on national television, playing undisciplined, lazy, conservative football.
- Since Dan Guerrero has taken the reins at Morgan Center, UCLA has managed to consistently slide toward mediocrity and obscurity, causing us to openly wonder if Dan's new slogan is "First to 100, Last to 200" as UCLA's formerly-consistent championship haul gets smaller during his reign.
- The entire student seating debacle at the lame, over-priced Pauley Pavilion renovation (#SFatPauley), which involved shady UCLA athletic department officials flat-out lying to the UCLA community.
- The idiotic decision to hire Cheatey Petey disciple Rocky Seto as UCLA's next defensive coordinator (#VetoSeto), demonstrating a total inability to grasp the entire Bruin Nation's objection to hiring a shady Trogan operator from a sanctioned program of cheaters.
- Declining operating revenue and ticket sales due to total mismanagement of UCLA's main revenue program, letting football turn into a total joke.
- Hiring two football coaches from the diseased, conservative, play-not-to-lose Donahue coaching tree (Karl Dorrell and Rick Neuheisel), while passing on other, better qualified, more talented coaches, that made us openly question Guerrero's ability to evaluate coaching talent and make a competent hire for the football program.
What's sad is that this list isn't even exhaustive. One need only punch Guerrero's name into our search engine to pull up a full archive chronicling Dan's repeated failures as UCLA's athletic director.
And yet, this complete and total underperformance is somehow deserving of the highest salary of any other athletic director in the conference?
Simply put, this is unacceptable. For the amount of money that UCLA is paying Dan Guerrero, Bruins certainly deserve more than the pathetic "leadership" that we've seen from Dan Guerrero and his lying cronies at Morgan Center.
GO BRUINS
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And with that ...
here are your Pregame Guesses for Washington State …
Damn, I don’t like having to follow that later today.
Ugh so much ugly stuff
And on that note, UCLA is -3.5 favorites tomorrow. Meaning, a whopping .5 points better than Wazzou after home field advantage (if you want to call an empty RB that)
Just more failure during the age of Guerrerror.
Washington State
has thrown their Cougars on the fire.
My feelings – as usual – we will slaughter them all. # Baghdad Dan.
by Odysseus on Oct 7, 2011 9:24 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
any predictions
as to the attendance tomorrow night? I’m scared to even think about it…
double edged sword
late game means more time for tailgating
late game means fewer families likely to take their kids
late games means fewer students even though school started
My guess: 55,000
But hey, what do I know. I’m just the 800 lbs bruin in the room.
I say drop that 10-15K
Really, I only expect maybe 40,000-45,000 fans at the Rose Bowl for a Pac-12 conference home game!
Pathetic.
We didn't even get 55K for Texas
and that was a 12:30 game with loads of Texas fans. I’m thinking something around 45K.
by SonOfWestwood93 on Oct 7, 2011 1:36 PM PDT up reply actions
The most disturbing thing about Dan Guerrero is:
His Dis-Interest in the $4 Million Dollars that Alumni have set aside to hire a New coach!
He says this is Not the bruin way, and hasn’t been in the past!
News to you Dan: These Alumni with this $4 million available, are the very Alumni that will see to it that “You” lose your job. Don’t remain stupid Dan! Take the money, hire the coach, and at least “Try” to keep your job. And if you think I’m kidding Dan, call me and I’ll tell you at least 2 names that are on the involved list, one of which I’m related to. So, I’ll be waiting for your call danny. Waiting…………..
I'm not familiar with the #4M set-aside, look
Can you share the details? Also, is this widely known and I just missed it? (Not impossible by any stretch of the imagination.)
It's been talked about several times on talk radio. Touchy subject!
But If you ask Tracey Pearson about additional funds available to hire a new coach he may elaborate. Again it’s a touchy subject! But I heard Tracey on the PMS show recently trying not to talk about it. It’s a touchy subject, but what I like about it, is that we have Alunmi who are dedicated and interested in helping the program. It goes on nationwide! However, Dan won’t talk about it. He’d rather be straight forward-a loser. Alumni is getting restless and soon it won’t matter what Dan thinks! Watch………..Just watch!…………
Somehow the thread got sidetracked.
This started out as being an information piece about how much this guy gets for doing so little.
Any ideas out there as to how to force the issue, and make him or block explain why he is still receiving any salary at all, let along that embarrassingly bloated amount? The only thing I can think of is to make sure one of the local guys confronts him at every press conference (with other reporters present) and asks him how he can justify that salary with no conference championships in the number one revenue generating sport in recent memory. (Honestly, I don’t remember the last one. Was it 1998 with Cade and the rest of the team on the road in West Madison at the Rose Bowl?)
Maybe we need to get some press credentials for the BN so we can legitimately confront him.
The only other thought might be to find a journalist with some cojones, i.e., does anyone have any connections with the guys at Yahoo Sports? This is not as big a scandal as cheating at just$c*, but it’s certainly an eye-opener. I think Yahoo Sports might like a story like this. People like to read about corruption, and what Doughnut Dan is doing is corrupt, in my opinion.
Somehow, someway, someone was overly impressed with Dan's resume.
Hey dan:
Life is a Resume and everyday we put something new on it.
Watcha puttin on your resume today dan?
Just your Salary?
1% of every dollar that the athletic department generates
goes into Dan’s pocket. Think about that.
The highest paid executive last year was Viacom’s CEO.
He made 0.65% of Viacom’s revenue.
Dan is getting a bigger piece of the pie than wall street CEOs. Great gig if you can get it.
by silverlakebruin on Oct 7, 2011 10:15 AM PDT reply actions
On wall street
the CEOs are not the highest paid employees. But I get your point.
Sadly it seems it only has to do with the number of sports that UCLA has, not how successful they are.
I just don’t understand how you can pay your AD so much and still not give a shit about football.
But hey, what do I know. I’m just the 800 lbs bruin in the room.
So interesting to hear about this
These days, we hear such refrain constantly, " don’t put the party interests ahead of the country’s " Apparently, in Guerrero’s office, there must be a sign on his desk that says " My pocket comes first "
What a dirty shame UCLA ever gets its AD such a deal, then winds up with such dismal results from the football team. I don’t know how other powerhouse programs pay their ADs, but this is illogical, unjustified, morally incomprehensible, if you ask me.
more sobering...
Steve Jobs formal salary was $1 a year….if only we had 688,296 Steve Jobs.
by GemCityBruin on Oct 7, 2011 10:46 AM PDT up reply actions
All we need is one. And his name may be Mike leach.
I’m reading his book now. I hope somebody at UCLA is doing the same. We may as well trade a U$c trained lawyer for one trained at Pepperdine.
by BrendonBruin on Oct 7, 2011 11:31 AM PDT up reply actions
Wow! That's soooooo disturbing.
Outrageous dan.
When I look at the picture at the top, I feel like saying "And you want to be MY latex salesman."
I’m more sure than ever that Doughnut Dan came to UCLA from Vandelay Enterprises.
We need a Pit Bull as AD.
Not a Fuller-Brush salesman.
No, a Navy Seal
for their singular determination & focus, valor & combativeness, on top of their sharp intellect & quick thinking skills, plus the vision for the battles ahead. Wait, I left out their athleticism too. Can you imagine such qualities being rubbed off from the AD to coaches, then players on the field.
Well said
They (and other service members) embody the opposite of what Dan has shown up to this point.
can we please take a small step forword!!!
Can Guerrero please get away from adidas please!!! They show ucla no love what so ever!!! Got to under armor or nike!!!! Why is dan guerrero going into the san pedro hall of fame?? He is from Wilmington and played baseball at banning high!! Wtf!!! Get rid of Dan and CRN!!!!!
I don't see him doing that
Plus he’s a great TV analyst.
But hey, what do I know. I’m just the 800 lbs bruin in the room.
I think there's more to the argument too
I can’t remember the details but have read them here. I am thinking about the number of NCs across all sports the past 5 years (isn’t it something like 1 or 2 in women’s and none in men’s?) and then isn’t our athletic program as a whole rated #47 or something like that, behind much smaller schools with fewer resources and far less tradition?
by RealisticBruinFan on Oct 7, 2011 10:40 AM PDT reply actions
DG NEEDS TO GO...
Period.
Los Angeles Rams and the UCLA Bruins!!!!!
by Minnesota Bruinfan on Oct 7, 2011 10:48 AM PDT reply actions
What if the Top Paid Guy you hired
…had no previous experience?
Dan’s background is all small program experience from schools with essentially no football programs.
Where he has managed to get the job done in coaching selections happens to dovetail neatly with sports he had previous experience as AD.
So, we’re paying top dollar for a guy who came to the door with zero Div I / II / III experience with the top revenue sport. None.
That is not the ticket to success….the numbers prove it.
He cannot be allowed to make the choice of the next head football coach. He’s simply not qualified.
That is so true GemCityBruin. Wow,
It “stupifies” me! Is that even a word?
Crap……
dg did NOT come from a first rate athletic program at ucirvine (sorry sister uc)
and he has taken a truly first rate athletic department at UCLA, down the path to mediocricy (Mediocricy…neglect, danger and bad smell)
Yeap, UCIrvine's sports program dwarfs in comparison
with Santa Ana Mater Dei, even.
I think the worst part of this news is the assumption
that when you give an employee a raise, you aim to keep him around longer.
Like many others here, I feel Guerror should be shown the door and take Rick with him. This news just about confirms to me that Rick will not be fired, and if he is, we can expect another hire along the mold of the last two hires.
The best thing you can do for your children is to love their mother. John Wooden
The person who Doughnut Dan reports to is very satisfied with his performance
That’s obvious from the fact that Doughnut Dan got a very large raise instead of being fired. What does that say about the person who Doughnut Dan reports to?
This is too true
It’s such a sorry state of affairs for our athletic department when I don’t even care if they fire Neuheisel or not, as I have no reason to believe anything will get better either way. Nothing’s going to change until there’s some wholesale cleaning throughout the department.
by SonOfWestwood93 on Oct 7, 2011 1:29 PM PDT up reply actions
Wait, SonOfWestwood, from time to time ....
when stopped by Morgan Center while on campus, I saw some rather personable, pleasant looking coeds in there. May be they are simply part time student employees. We can’t lump these innocent kids together with the adults in the building and their sins. Don’t give them the boots, for god’s sake.
Yikes!
That’s depressing to think about. And if someone wants to float DG’s bosses name out there, I’m sure we can chime in with a comment or 90. I’ll be the first: WTF are you doing giving DG a raise? What favor did he accomplish for you that was soooo Big, it deserved a raise?
it's as if...
DG was hired to decommission UCLA sports. To make us Ivy League.
by BC_Bruin on Oct 7, 2011 1:15 PM PDT via iPhone app reply actions
I've thought about this too.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they want to kill football from within.
The best thing you can do for your children is to love their mother. John Wooden
I feel like, I need a drink, and I've been sober for 21 years and 3 months.
But I’m not giving up my sobriety for DG.
His boss couldn’t pay me enough!
Don't forget everyone!
We have the most NCAA team championships and we’re the ONLY school to have a #1 pick in football, basketball, and baseball. Woo hoo!! That’s all thanks to Guerrero, right!?!?
I'm sure he had something to do
with the success of Jackie Robinson (not the stadium!)…maybe I’ll ask him about it on his ‘blog.’
Roses are red, violets are blue...f*** $C.
There are many definitions of trogan
Someone who is arrogant without a valid reason is a trogan.
Someone whose daddy says, “Here, sone, here’s the multimillion dollar corporation with one of the most recognized brands in the world. Don’t break it.” That guy is a trogan.
Someone who generally doesn’t have the skill or the intelligence for the position he is given is a trogan.
There are more. I’m starting to think that despite where Doughnut Dan Guerrerror says he went to school, he’s a trogan.
Turnaround
Seems that the best and most efficient path would be to replace DG with RN. Give RN a free hand to do a triage on the sports programs and make it all transparent. Top to bottom men and women sports. Get us on a path to 200. Figure out how to get the fan base excited and fill up the Rose Bowl. By the way the fan base goes way beyond the alumni and students. There must be thousands if not millions of untapped fans who could be brought into the Bruin fold. Our family Bruin fervor is multigenerational and none of us attended the GREAT UCLA.
I liked this idea...
until I started to wonder how much of the choice to (try to) hire Rocky Seto came from Neuheisel.
Roses are red, violets are blue...f*** $C.
Why?
This idea has been floated around a lot, but I strongly disagree with it. RN has not demonstrated any sort of competence whatsoever—important jobs should not be given to people on the basis of them being personable and appearing passionate.
RN may well excite the fan base as an AD in the short-term, but if this is the same person who chose (or at least green-lit) Seto, then his coaching hires will be about as successful as his coaching career. The only good solution for exciting the UCLA base is winning honorably.
by dokein on Oct 7, 2011 8:55 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
No competence whatsoever?
Well he did a competent job at CU
And a competent job at WU
and a competent job with that wrongful termination lawsuit.
Play with so much passion nothing else matters
by KnudsenRockne on Oct 7, 2011 8:58 PM PDT up reply actions
Amend it to no competence recently.
I’m just saying, him being a likable charismatic guy doesn’t magically translate into him being a solid AD. We’ve all seen people at work who were hired almost exclusively on the basis of their likability, rather than an objective evaluation of their competence (and while people skills are a huge part of the AD position, it doesn’t comprise the entire scope of skills necessary), and it almost never turns out well.
I tell people a hundred million times don't exaggerate ;)
I dont know but I’ve heard tell that Coach Rick – this guy who can recruit but cannot coach – lead some teams to some bowl games ( but that was because he could coach talent but he bever was able to recruit it).
Don’t get me wrong, I think that Neuheisel has had enough of a negative track record here that if he cannot do something dramatic in the nest few weeks it is extremely unlikely he will (here). OTOH: I’m not going to get all revisionist on his past history -
Even if we fire Coach Rick tomorrow, let’s get some facts straight: He isn’t a total loser as a head coach.
So let’s stop this sort of hyperbole which would be the most egregious offensive to humanity second only to if every ethnic group which hated another ethnic group were to band together with all other ethnic groups and force the hated ethnic groups to watch Paul Shore movies until they lost the will to live – and then re-iterated the process until there were no longer more than one ethnic group… leaving only me. Who hates no one :)
Play with so much passion nothing else matters
by KnudsenRockne on Oct 7, 2011 10:39 PM PDT up reply actions
Didn't want to argue the point since it wasn't central but:
Quoting Fox71 from another post:
“People talk about the success that CTSS had in the past at CU and UW. Actually, it was pretty much the same as the four years preceding his arrival. He was at CU from 95 to 98, and was 33-14. In the four preceding years, Bill McCartney was 36-9-3. He was at UW from 99 to 02, and his record was 33-16. In th four preceding years, Jim Lambright’s record was 30-17-1. Total for those 8 years – CTSS 66-30, CTSS’s predecessor’s 66-26-4. That’s about as close to a wash as possible.
CTSS has a record of 17-25. In his predecessor’s final 42 games, the record was 24-18. So the total body of work in CTSS’s head coaching career is actually worse than that of the coaches he replaced. That’s not anything that happened just lately. It’s something that has demonstrated itself over his entire coaching career."
At best Neuheisel was borderline competent back then and failed to adapt to the new college football landscape since. A programmer who is decent (not great—just decent) in 2001 who isn’t fluent with new languages and out of touch with new hardware is an incompetent programmer in 2011.
Considering that his biggest failure is in managing a team (promoting the right players, dishing out consequences for poor performance e.g. tackling, hiring competent DCs and OCs—or if he did get competent DCs and OCs, then failing to listen to them), there is no reason to expect that he will be able to manage a program well. Sure he was great at recruiting players—he might be excellent at cooking steaks too—but it’s a tangential skill at best in the AD position and shouldn’t be used to evaluate his competence for the job.
A Carrera?
Is this a subtle way of saying Danny is a base model? I guess you wanted to do a apples to apples comparison. Otherwise, you could have compared him to a higher up model like the Turbo S (he’s “only” worth about 3 of those). If you are saying that we need a better model AD, then I’m all for that.
Hey! Why not start the site for his demise??
CANDAN.COM. Agree? Vote.
Our worst fears has come to roost
Dan Guerrero = Homer Simpson
UCLA fans = Frank Grimes
If you remember that episode… it didn’t work out too well for “Grimey”.
Doesn't surprise me..
Doughnut Dan is a fantastic advocate for himself. Wish he only put in a tenth of that effort into his alma mater.
by 99von on Oct 7, 2011 5:11 PM PDT via mobile reply actions 1 recs
Seems to me
We should be attacking the salary and the actions of the athletic director and not the man. Frankly, the only way I can rationalize this man’s career success involves photographs of influential people and goats (or other barnyard animals – but I’ll just use ‘goats’ as a stand in for them). I seriously doubt that there is anything BN can do which will offset the power of photographs of influential people with goats,
We could write a million letters but as they say “A picture is worth a thousand words and a picture of someone with a goat is worth a million letters”
We could stop donating to UCLA and start donating to USC (and sending copies of canceled checkes to Morgan Center) but that won’t counter photos of influential people with goats.
We should campaign to have the Athletic Director’s base salary range set equal to that of tenured faculty and bonuses determined by athletic success. Is that not fair?
Play with so much passion nothing else matters
by KnudsenRockne on Oct 7, 2011 9:10 PM PDT reply actions 1 recs
Don't forget losing Nikki Caldwell.
And letting the NCAA make us play on Gonzaga on their home court.
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