So let's start this post with a little flashback on couple of old stories. I will go back to February of 2003 when ESPN's Ivan Maisel wrote this glowing piece on the incoming UCLA head coach:
'Dorrellian' back in style in Westwood
By Ivan Maisel
ESPN.com
LOS ANGELES -- When Karl Dorrell played wide receiver at UCLA in the mid-1980s, the coaches created an adjective to describe a player who did everything, from pulling on his socks to executing his assignments, with the precision of a diamond cutter.
"Dorrellian," recalled Homer Smith, the offensive coordinator of those teams. "He was a very exacting player. If you did your job really well, it was Dorrellian."
Aaaah. So what exactly is Dorrell's job as the head coach of UCLA football? Well after more than four years a huge chunk of Bruin Nation is still not sure. So we went to an outside observer. Allow me to share this observation from Sunday Morning Quarterback (SMQ), perhaps the most astute college football commentators in the world of college blogsphere. Quoting Lonnie White from the Trojan Times SMQ made the following observation on KD in his season preview on UCLA:
By Ivan Maisel
ESPN.com
LOS ANGELES -- When Karl Dorrell played wide receiver at UCLA in the mid-1980s, the coaches created an adjective to describe a player who did everything, from pulling on his socks to executing his assignments, with the precision of a diamond cutter.
"Dorrellian," recalled Homer Smith, the offensive coordinator of those teams. "He was a very exacting player. If you did your job really well, it was Dorrellian."
Spring practice won't start for UCLA until April 5, but already Norvell is expected to free up Dorrell for the bureaucratic tasks he apparently relishes - writes Lonnie White of the L.A. Times: "Getting Norvell to run the offense is a big step in the right direction because Dorrell wants to be more of a CEO type of head coach. Last season, he took on a lot of coaching responsibility when Svoboda faltered as O.C. " Norvell makes UCLA the first I-A program in the country with a black coach in each its top three positions, but certainly they're more concerned with having a pair of competent coordinators at the same time, for a change.
Yeap. That's right.Dorrell relishes the role of a CEO coach who doesn't really want to deal with the play calling on the field so he can seemingly focus on various tasks off the field (may be remembering people's birthdays).
Well since he apparently relishes the bureaucratic tasks, you'd think he would get the simple task of taking care of the details of hiring process of some of his most important assistant coaches during the off season.
So what does a standard hiring process at UCLA involve? Well, if you apply for a job at UCLA it seems like you do have to fill out the information on "Criminal History":
Thanks to a resourceful reader who emailed us those screen shots. You can click on the image to see the whole page, which is about 4 or 5 pages into online application on the UCLA official site. If you can't make it out, here is the question under the section titled "criminal history" in a UCLA job application:
Have you ever been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor offense by any court in California?
Seems a pretty straight forward question to answer. So now here are our questions for the CEO head coach (if you have more you can think of please share them in the comment thread):
What did Karl Dorrell know (as reported in the LA Times) about Eric Scott's prior criminal record when he hired him in his UCLA coaching staff?Those are serious questions IMO.
Did he or anyone in his staff know about Eric Scott's prior convictions while they were completing Scott's hiring process at UCLA?
Did Eric Scott disclose the information on his prior arrests on any standard UCLA application form when he was filling out the paper work to finalize the details of his hire as the UCLA WR coach?
I think it is reasonable to expect that any professional-run organization, institution, and especially a place like UCLA would run background checks on every professional employee. It is also reasonable to infer IMO that in any serious work place if an employee lied on his or her job application about such matters, he or she would get terminated.
In the case of Dorrell's football program (where Dorrell has projected the image of a CEO who loves making sure that the bureaucratic tasks are well taken care of) I imagine it is reasonable for us to expect that the CEO would make sure that his employees are taking the task of filling out these forms seriously. Especially for an employee like Eric Scott, whose past Dorrell was aware of (as he admitted per the LA Times). Hey ... that would be "The Dorrellian" thing to do!
So if turns out that Scott lied in his application, I would expect that Dorrell who has been hyped for running a clean program would terminate his employment. On the other hand if Dorrell knew about Scott's prior arrests or if Scott disclosed that information during the hiring process, it is going to be the CEO of the UCLA football program, who will have some explaining to do.
I think the CEO of the UCLA football program owes the alums, students and greater UCLA community some answers.
GO BRUINS.