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An ABSOLUTE NO to DeWayne Walker As Permanent Head Coach

By Nestor

While we all `enjoy' the suspense, discussions, and anticipating around the ongoing coaching search, I want to make one thing clear: DeWayne Walker will not be an acceptable option as the next head coach of UCLA football. Last Friday I wrote up a post laying out 4 tests for our next head coach: 1) no retreads, 2) no retirees, 3) no repeat offenders and 4) no retainers. Failing any of those 4 tests will not make a coaching candidate acceptable in Westwood.  Admittedly I am now in the "undecided" category wrt to Mike Leach and can see the number of arguments many of you have posted on his behalf.

However, wrt to Walker I am not willing to compromise. We cannot simply afford to take another flier on an unproven assistant (in this case with only 2 years of experience) who has 0 years of experience as a head coach.We will not welcome him as the next head coach of UCLA football. More from DumpDorrell.com:

There is a concerted organized effort to get public opinion behind DeWayne Walker to replace Dorrell as our head coach.  That would be a disaster.  While Walker may someday be a successful head coach, we at UCLA have already gambled ... for too long ... and lost with that kind of bet.  Let Walker prove he is a successful head coach on someone else's dime (our on-the-job-training shop is closed!), and if he does THEN we could take a look at him if we have an opening.

Walker's qualifications are worse than Dorrell's were when he was wrongly hired:  2 years as defensive coordinator, a 13-12 record, blowout and embarrassing losses to awful teams (Utah, Arizona, Wazzu x2, Notre Dame, Florida St.), a now notorious inability to stop the increasingly popular spread offense (Oregon, Arizona, Wazzu), and shockingly ... after having his senior laden defense come back for a 2nd year Walker made the defense WORSE, in nearly EVERY statistic, than last year!!  DO NOT WANT!!
So after going through the drip-drip-drip agony under Donahue, Toledo, and Dorrell, coaches who came in without any head coaching experience, we are not ready to accept a similar scenario again. And we are not going to accept explanations of how Walker turned out to be the best option after a search process.

Make no mistake about it. If Walker somehow weasels himself into the head coaching position of UCLA, we will not only be back to square one, our posture towards his coaching tenure will be hundred times tense than what it was under Karl Dorrell. There will be no let up and he will not get the same benefit of the doubt we gave coaches like Ben Howland and John Savage, who arrived at UCLA with resumes of proven program building experience as head coaches. We are going to come at him day after day. We will not let up.  We are lot stronger now than the three of us were when we started talking at this little place more than three years ago. We now number in thousands.

So if you are from Morgan Center or Murphy Hall consider this a simple message.

We want someone who has a proven program building experience as a head coach. Which means once again an absolute no to DeWayne Walker as the next head coach of UCLA football.

GO BRUINS.

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