BULLCRAP.  You know and I know that the 10-2 records was the result of playing badly in countless games, and then having to miraculously come from behind time and time again against pathetic teams.  You don't think the BCS committee saw the shallowness of that 10-2?

BCS invitations go out to the top teams in the country.  You have the gall to assert that the 10-2 team was one of the best teams in the country that year?

Although it is in public forum of an online page, the permission to post is reserved for members.  As such, the circle of posters becomes a semi-private group.  You are allowed to disagree, but we ask that you get your facts correct.  In other words, please double-check statements like Coach Dorell being the "first coach to lead us to four straight bowl games."

OK, personally, I'd grant you that he had a better program to start with.  But how many winning seasons did he have his first 4 years?  How many Bowl wins?  How many times did his team lose after having a halftime lead?

Interesting point.  However, the fact that the 1st and 3rd games against SC were blowouts (the 47-22 score really was not that close, as SC had a 20-point lead by halftime, IIRC.)  should also be taken into account.  

And I do not believe Tedford is a good example for you to rely upon.  Cal was arguably WORSE than us in terms of football when we got there, and Tedford has flourished.   Tedford has a higher winning percentage against winning teams, on the road, and in November and December than Dorrell's teams.

As for us being on the rise?  Our record is this:

2003. 6-7
      
2004. 6-6
      
2005. 10-2
      
2006. 7-6

What tangible signs do we have that we are CATCHING UP?  We beat them once.  We have averaged 7 wins /year, counting bowl games, the past 4 years.  6-7 regular season wins a year puts us in the middle of the Pac-10.

Didn't Dorrell say when he was hired that he wanted to go to BCS games?  Didn't Guerrero say he wanted us to be comepting for BCS games every few years?  And the one year we were on the threshhold of it, we lost.  BY FORTY-SEVEN POINTS.

The "whole section"?  How is this different from any other new head coach in Div. I football?  Tedford had to step in at Cal after some of the worst seasons in history.  Carroll stepped in after freaking Paul Hackett, one of the most maligned college coaches ever.   How can this team be "on the rise" when, far more often than not, it loses to winning teams, loses on the road, and loses at the end of the year (with a 2-6 record in Bowl games and $C Games).

When is a lsos to $C embarrassing?  When it's 66-19 on National TV and we're supposedly competing for a BCS spot.

When it's 47-22, and only by the grace of some 2nd-half special teams work.

And, by the way, Arizona had how many wins when they blew us out?  And WSU is a Pac-10 team, too, huh?  If a win is a win, then a LOSS is a LOSS.

Agree to disagree as to the term "big win."

I don't believe this.  Dorrell didn't have that much time to put a staff together???  How many new assistant coaches have we had on the offensive side alone?  For a coach who uses a system that takes several years to master, it doesn't seem wise to keep bringing in new coaches EVERY YEAR.

I will grant it is not a scientific poll.  However, given the number of members and hits we get on this site, it's safe to say that 80% of at least one group of fans (many of whom, like me, came on board during hoops season in 2006, not necessarily during football season) are not happy.  At least according to this informal poll.  If you can show other polling info from another site, then feel free to run it up the flagpole here.

As, apparently, you are doing, as well.  Feel free to vent, but don't expect a free ride.  You bring up an idea, it will be responded to, just as you are responding to many of us.

If you don't like our opinions, why do you come here?

M

BUT

He has not proven himself by capitalizing on his other successes.  

Yes he has brought in some good classy players and has made inroads to inner-city schools that were previously off our radar.  He loves the school and has worked hard to overcome the 'SC Problem.'

BUT

Have these players developed beyond where they started?

Yes, some have, but they are few and far between.  Most of whom have developed as a result of Dwayne Walker.  The same can be said of the recruiting improvements this year.

With the exception of the 10-2 year he has not even equaled the level of excellence of his predecessor (8-5).

Your comment on the revolving door is silly because a revolving door, when used in metaphor, implies consistent turnover, not rehiring.  A guy gets hired, and then leaves or is fired. Turnover.  Would you want to work at a company that has this level of turnover?

My biggest problem is with the idea that wins and losses all come equally.  When we say embarrassing loss to SC we mean a 47 point loss when we supposedly have a good team.  It was one of the worst losses in decades.  Not since the 77-0 or 52-0 losses when the school was barely built had there been such a loss.  The loss was pathetic.  As was the similar loss to a BAD Arizona team that year.  That year we had to make miracle comebacks 5 times.  The team looked bad most of the season with the exception of those comebacks and occasional big plays.  This is my real complaint about KD, his teams are inconsistent.  Sometimes they play fairly well, but many times they don't.  Often they don't look ready for what the other side is doing, and have trouble adjusting.

While you may be able to explain away some of those stats with arguments to the effect of SC is just that hard to play against or it's East coast bias, when taken as a whole, they do not paint the picture of a team led by great coach.

And BTW if SC is our only problem then why are the other teams we play against so damn hard to beat?

It seems you are ignoring individual games as a barometer for our program. While Toledo was coach, we won the games we were supposed to win, and lost the games against better teams. We also pulled upsets in between. With KD, every game is a frigging crapshoot. I know (and my fellow BNers know) that our beloved Bruins have become a joke, a hopelessly inconsistent ballclub that gives Vegas fits. Our red-zone offense? The field goal unit. Our defense shut down SC and then wet the bed against a Jeff Bowden offense. Ben Olson dominated his first game as a Bruin against Utah. Against RICE? Not so much. In our 10-2 season that you love to point out so much, Drew Olson and MJD made plays to spark amazing comebacks against teams we should have flat-out destroyed from the opening kickoff. Cal finished the season ranked #21. Stanford, Washington, Wazzu? None were bowl teams. The Oklahoma team that we beat at the beginning of the year was trash, and then Bomar learned how to play football. NONE of that season was coaching. We throttled 2 teams: Oregon State and Rice. Wow.
In his years as head coach, KD has had how many dominant wins, exactly? Every team we play has a shot against us. KD is simply not the coach we need. He reminds me of L**: Inconsistent play, mediocre post-season success, a few great players that will be good at the next level (MJD, Lewis) a stunning upset that shows our real team potential... Ugh.
Our team should rip through this years' schedule like a hot knife through butter. It won't. The SC game will be ghastly, even though we return almost the entire defensive unit that dominated them when they still had Dwayne Jarrett and Steve Smith. The  powder-keg blue on our uniforms no longer hides a young monster underneath, one that punches you in the mouth and stays tough. We now resemble scared baby bears tumbling out of the gate in pretty jerseys. Not good.

(For the record, I love my Bruins. I'm going to root for them with all my heart. I hope you guys will too.)

To begin with, lets just keep Tom Osborne out of this whole thing.  Nobody is demanding KD to win a NC at this very moment so him taking however many years to win one is irrelevant.  We are not up in arms because he has failed to win a NC thus far.  I can only wish this was the reason.

1-3 against Southern Cal.
"As I said Dorrell was given a program in complete disarray and was way behind the 8 ball when he came in while SC has been the elite college football program of the last five years.  This ain't the SC of the 90's."
Let's take a closer look at us and our rivals the 3 years prior to the current HC's taking over.  

SC (Paul Hackett era)
1998 - (8-5; lost to TCU in Sun Bowl)
1999 - (6-6)
2000 - (5-7)
2001 - (6-6; lost to Fresno in LV Bowl) PC's 1st season

UCLA (Bob Toledo)
2000 - (6-6; lost to Wisconsin in Sun Bowl)
2001 - (7-4)
2002 - (7-5; beat New Mex in LV Bowl)
2003 - (6-7; lost to Fresno in Silicon Valley Bowl) KD's 1st season

Your argument that KD walked into a program in complete disarray is not accurate.  I'm well aware of the numerous off field issues that plagued our program during the Toledo era.  These led to multiple promising seasons get flushed down the toilet.  If your "opinion" is "fact", then you have to state that PC came into a similar type of situation post the Hackett era.  SC may not have had the problems we had off the field but we were kicking their arse in recruiting.  The health of a program is determined as a whole.  You can't designate one thing as being more crucial than another.  Some coaches may feel that they can compete immediately because the talent is already there and all they would need to do is instill some discipline.  You are absolutely right about one thing.  This isn't the SC of the 90's.  They realized how incompetent their coach was and got rid of him.  They did not accept mediocrity nor could they accept losing to their rivals year after year.  They hired a coach who re-built a program that was left in ashes by Hackett.  KD took over a team that was 7-5, returning an experienced defense and took a step backward.  

"This whole section has to be taken with a grain of salt.  We only have four years to judge this by and UCLA was not in good shape when Dorrell took over.  I mean i'm sure you can even pile up worse statistics than these for the first four years the new Rutgers coach was at Rutgers but look where Rutgers is now."

Uhhh.....if you were as mediocre as KD has been, would your boss still keep you around?  Please do not compare us to Rutgers.  Rutgers?, are you freakin' kiddin' me? You're going to compare UCLA's situation to Rutgers?  I can't even name one famous football alumnus from Rutgers.  They don't have any tradition nor did they even have a program worth mentioning.  They were chillin' with Temple until their season last year.  UCLA has had Jackie Robinson, Gary Beban, Jerry Robinson, Kenny Easley, Troy Aikman, Johnathan Ogden, etc.  These guys are Hall of Famers not only in college but at the NFL as well.  So, I'm to disregard our tradition and look at KD's era as if he had the daunting task of building a program from scratch such as Schiano?  Unbelieveable.......

Also Dorrell may be 1-3 in bowl games but in his most important bowl game to date, the Sun Bowl, he beat Northwestern.

Unfortunately, this is the highest profile bowl that we've been to.  But based on your logic, I should be ecstatic that we beat a powerhouse such as Northwestern.  Whaaaattt?  Since Northwestern went to the Rose Bowl under Barnett, they are on equal footing as UCLA.  Both schools football traditions are similar too, right?  OK, lets say this was the case, then how do you explain losses to Wyoming & Fresno?  And the Fresno team we lost to was not the team with David Carr.  

Only 1 big game win.
USC, Cal twice, Oklahoma, Northwestern for the Sun Bowl.  That's 5 right there.

This is a matter of opinion as well.  I personally expected us to beat OU especially when we were facing a team starting a RS Fr (Bomar), on the road who has yet to take a single snap.  This was not the Jason White team.  I don't think I need to speak about Northwestern.  You can point out all the "big games" KD won but how do you explain all those losses to the mediocre or sub-500 teams?  

80% of Bruins fans polled on Bruinsnation.com disapprove of the job Karl Dorrell is doing.
As you guys have stated recently it's pretty easy to ask a pole question in a way where it influences people answers one way or another and the way your pole question was asked and the choices of answers you gave people it was so biased it's not even funny.  Plus Bruinsnation does not reflect the average fan.  It's a small contigent of rabid Dorrell haters that are not reflective of the UCLA community as a whole and who come here to vent their frustration and bond with other cyberspace know-it-alls.

BN doesn't reflect the average fan?  What do you mean by that?  If the "average UCLA fan" cannot see how incompetent our HC is, how he is way in over his head, how Lavin-esque he is, how our hated rivals love him as much as they love PC, how he has been able to turn a very proud program into a mediocre one where we throw a stinkin' party for beating Northwestern in a mediocre bowl, how we continue to lose to losing teams, how we continue to stink it up in Bowl games, how we cannot win on the road with any consistency, etc., I'm beyond relieved that I am not the "average fan" that you speak of.  When will all the KD apologists realize that "YOU" are the reason why "MEDIOCRITY" is accepted.  Based on your way of viewing things, we should have never fired Lavin considering all the Sweet 16's he took us to.  Of course you'd rather have Lavin over Howland........

BT is factually correct, but substantively misleading. The fact doesn't tell the story, much like saying because there were no female PhDs in the 20s means there weren't any smart women.  Since the BCS was instituted in 97 only 1 Pac-10 school has gone to BCS games other than the Rose Bowl (Oregon St. in 2000 Fiesta after our usually silent commish threatened to pull out of the BCS if #6 Oregon St. was snubbed, and #2 ranked Oregon in both polls was snubbed by the BCS in 2001 and had to settle for the non-championship Fiesta Bowl and the Rose went to Miami and Nebraska so this doesnt count because no other conference team went to a BCS bowl).  

Also, the Pac-10 has been snubbed in other years during the Dorrell era and SHOULD have had a second BCS bid. The problem was Tom Hansen our horrible commish, not the caliber of talent other than SuC. In 2004 #4 ranked Cal was snubbed by the BCS because SEC college coach voters did not vote in CAL so that lower ranked Texas could get a second BCS bid for the SEC. That is a known FACT. In 2005 #6 ranked 1-loss Oregon got snubbed in favor of 2-loss Notre Dame, Ohio State, Georia AND 4-loss Florida State!!!

So you're stupid comment that we shouldn't criticize Dorrell for not being in a BCS bowl because no other pac-10 team has made it during his era is a bogus argument.

2. No team other than SuC has won the Pac-10 so we shouldn't hold Dorrell accountable to what his boss AND Dorrell himself expects of him. FALSE.  Check your facts.  Cal shared the Pac-10 title last year! They can hang a title banner. Just because SuC won the tie-breaker doesn't make them the outright champion. It only gave them the right to go to the Rose Bowl.
3. Dorrell was given a program in complete disarray.  FALSE.  All the experts which you so valiantly source in defense of Dorrell gave Dorrell a shot at the Pac-10 title his first year, including Dorrell himself, because he was given such great talent to work with.  That talent was 8-5 the year before and one more year of experience under their belt. Dorrell couldnt match that prior year record in any year but one, not even in his 4th year!!!  

Using a subjective definition I would argue that a good coach is one that gets the most out of the available talent.  However, this is subjective because there is no good way to measure the level of talent versus on-field performance, especially in a team sport.  Just a lot of opinions.

I beleive a good objective definition is to measure results.  Sure you can throw out lots of statistics (points scored, yards gained, turnovers, etc., etc., etc.).  However, win-loss is the utimate measure of success in sports.  Using this definition, KD is medicore.  As much as it pains me, SuC has a successful coach.  Except for his first season, he has his team winning an exceptionally high percentage of games.  To make this arguement more UCLA centric, Ben Howland is a good (actually I would say great) coach.  In two years he took a sub-500 team and made it into a consistent winner.  Al Scates, another great coach.  He has the occasional off year, but 19 NC's speak for themselves.  If KD had followed up 10-2 with other 9 or 10 win seasons, then I would consider him a good coach.  But, as been stated may times already, in 4 years he has produced one good season (without raising the issues of good versus lucky wins becuase a win is a win).  One good season every four years is not the record of a good coach.  Winning consistently is.  

Now Dorrell is a good man. No question about that whatsoever. But he has never taken us to the level of recruiting that we had even during Toledo's last year, when we were a mediocre team at best. So how can we say that we shouldn't recruit better. Even Oregon has pulled better classes a number of years. Cal as well. You really think those places have more to offer than sunny UCLA with our strong academics, great location and hot women?

Now for game management. I was one of the people who felt that after the 2005 season, while I was against our defensive weakness and mediocre playcalling, we should keep KD. After all, we won a bowl game and did go 10-2, and while the Arizona loss was inexusable, we lost to a USC team that was one of the best college football teams ever (I had to admit, but it is true). Even the USC game though, we could have stayed in that game. But still,Dorrell seemed to have made a step, and I said we should let him stay. But he '06 season negated those feelings. The ND, Washington, Oregon and Cal games we all winable, but we lost all four because of poor playcalling and clock manaement. The ND loss was particularly painful. So after these losses, I felt KD should go. But then 13-9 happened. And we felt a sense of euphoria over that, and it seemed that KD has almost vindicated some of what happened that season. So we let him stay, and lost to FSU.

I felt that after the FSU loss, we should have seen that there was no real positive direction that this team was going in, and he should walk. But here we are in June, and KD is still the guy. I think it's a bad move for the Lakers, but all we can hope for is that folks like those on BN keep the heat on DG and KD, and celebrate our wins but adhere to our expectations.

In conclusion, we have underperformed for too long. And when I see Pete Carroll, I know that 5 years has been more than enough time. If we are anything below 10 wins going into USC, then whatever happens, we need to let KD walk afte the USC game. If we win 10 games total, AND come in at least 2nd in the Pac-10, I'm willing to see KD stay, although still hestitant. But anything less than that, he needs to go. Let's make it happen.