IMHO the focus of the story from the Eric Scott scandal needs to be shifted from what happened during his fifth arrest to what actually happened during the process he was hired into Dorrell’s staff.
We will let the legal process play out wrt to Scott’s current troubles. However, we really need to get a definitive answer on how a man with 4 arrests and 2 convictions was hired into the UCLA staff without the head coach or the administrators at Morgan Center not knowing about.
A posted one of the recent Dohn Q&A below which reports that Dorrell knew about Eric’s Scott’s "difficult background with gang violence," but did not know about the arrests. Again to me that doesn’t really jive. You’d think a coach who has let himself hyped to be an individual who relishes bureaucratic tasks and a detailed oriented CEO type, would exercise his due diligence and make sure to do a through background check knowing that his latest assistant to be had a "difficult background with gang violence." Then how couldn’t he have not known about his prior arrests?
It just doesn’t make any sense. Dohn also had this exchange in the Part III of his Q&A posts from the weekend:
2. What did Dorrell know about Scott's arrests and convictions and when did he know it?? Dorrell said he knew something about Scott's prior incidents, so if he did was Dorrell involved in any way in Scott's deception in the application process in order to get Scott hired??
First, I don’t know if he lied in his application. My guess is he did not because most job applications ask if a person has been convicted of a felony, and he was not. His are misdemeanors.
Second, I believe Dorrell found out about Scott’s prior arrests when a reporter called the school to ask for a comment about it.
Oh and one another thing. I have heard another argument that we should lay off Dorrell and give him the benefit of the doubt, given he also took a chance on Eric Bienemy, who also had a checkered past (DUI related issues). That argument doesn’t fly. There are two crucial differences between EB’s situation around EB’s hiring process and the one wrt to Eric Scott. EB’s prior record was fairly public. We all knew about. And by "we" I mean fans who follow UCLA sports day to day via various websites. We all knew Dorrell was taking a chance. Some were not totally comfortable with it. But at least it was public knowledge. In this case apparently now Dorrell and UCLA administrators claim that they didn’t know about Scott’s prior legal troubles. So that is a huge difference.
Secondly, EB had already built up a track record as college assistant coach. Scott had absolutely no such experience. He was an "intern" at the UCLA football program but that was it. He had no experience as a big time college assistant coach. So by all accounts it looks like Dorrell made desperation hire by bringing in a high school assistant coach, just so he could reel in some recruits from the inner city, without really looking too much into Scott’s background even though he knew Scott had "difficult background with gang violence."
So any way you look at it at the hiring process of Eric Scott is exposing Dorrell as an incompetent and clueless CEO, who despite all the hype is not really paying attention to the details of his program. Any way you look at it, this is not good news for the UCLA football program.
UPDATE - N:Looks like Morgan Center is working hard to pass the buck and point fingers at other UCLA department over this Scott fiasco:
Sources are telling me there was a breakdown in the process before it reached athletics.
GO BRUINS.