Lessons in Incompetence: UCLA's Dan Guerrero Gets Big Money for Mediocre Results

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