Is UCLA Sliding Into Athletic Obscurity Under Guerrero's Reign of Error?

Last year, KSBruin set the table, breaking down a lot of numbers comparing our athletic accomplishments under widely-maligned former AD Peter Dalis and current AD Dan Guerrero.  A year later, and the picture isn't very pretty.  In the Directors' Cup (also known as a full-time resident of Palo Alto), UCLA has slid from fourth place last year to thirteenth place.  More damning though, in the similar Capital One Cup, Stanford (as it does annually with the Directors' Cup) has secured the woman's trophy and is one point off the lead for the men's trophy.  UCLA?  In the men's standings, we're #42, behind the likes of Akron (#13), Appalachian State (#27), Cornell (#30), and tied with New Hampshire.  We're so pitiful, William & Mary (they have sports, seriously, I swear) is only one point behind the Bruins.  In the women's standings, we're faring better, but not by much, coming in at a lame #23.

Our sister university in Berkeley?  They're ranked #8 in the men's standings and #3 in the women's standings.  So, Bruin fans, how did UCLA, the supposed premiere athletic university on the West Coast, the school that boasts of being top in NCAA team championships, fall behind a perennial also-ran like Cal?!  And ultimately, who is responsible for the dire state of UCLA athletics?

Two words: Dan Guerrero.

Let's break this down more after the jump.

We've talked about the drought of men's national titles in Westwood repeatedly here at Bruins Nation, but if the continued struggles of our football program for the last decade, and the recent backward slide of Howland's program didn't convince you, nothing demonstrates the stark decline in our men's programs than our place in the Directors' Cup and Capital One Cup.  By their formula, UCLA men's programs aren't even relevant.  How does one explain sliding in behind schools like Cornell and New Hampshire?  One point more than William & Mary?  Shocking, to say the least.

But, as mentioned earlier this week, that's not the picture you'd get if you were only reading the press releases and empty words from Dan Guerrero and his lying minions at the Morgan Center.

If you go back one year and look at the numbers KSBruin put together coupled with the dismal performance we've seen from UCLA across the board (leading to our extremely sub-par and unacceptable position in both the Drectors' Cup and Capital One Cup), it looks like Dan is more concerned with making nice-nice with his friends at the NCAA than making sure our student-athletes have the tools and support to compete for national championships, putting us in a strong position to compete for the Directors' Cup and Capital One Cup.

The irony, of course, is that Dan has built his legacy on the "First to 100" campaign. Yet, under his "leadership" while the Bruins broke through the 100 championship ceiling, the athletic programs at UCLA in general have been on a downward slide.  At the shocking decline our athletic department appears to have us heading in, it looks like the new slogan for UCLA athletics will one day be "Last to 200."

Unless Guerrero can turn this downward slide toward mediocrity and obscurity, it'll be time he finally gets the ax (if he doesn't do us the favor of jumping ship for the NCAA first).

Fire away with your thoughts.

GO BRUINS