So Dan Guerrero ran to the LA Times so that the paper could run a puff piece on him. Guess the goal here was to turn Chianti into a sympathetic figure who is dealing with unreasonable UCLA fans. To get this done Guerrero gave an interview to a "reporter," who has no clue and feel about college sports. Yes, Guerrero and UCLA ran to David Wharton. This is the same Wharton who once penned one of most LOL pathetic pieces the Times ever ran, dubbing Karl Dorrell - "the Thinker" from Westwood.
Instead of turning Guerrero into a sympathetic figure, Wharton's puff piece which doesn't provide any hard data points (more on that later in this post) turns Guerrero into a pathetic one, who looks befuddled, clueless and as usual tondeaf in terms of why UCLA alums and students are so disgusted with his pathetic reign in Westwood.
It is amusing to read Wharton referring to unhappiness in the greater Bruin Nation as "internet rancor," yet forgetting to mention how the topic of his puffery was booed offline in the Staples Center. No mention of how the anger and frustration towards Guerrero has moved well beyond online communities and have started to negatively impact UCLA's fundraising potential with a sedated and demoralized donor base.
Oh BTW Wharton wrote about Guerrero - "the Warrior" - playing a little baseball in Italy, but forgot to mention how upset Bruin alums are at him for taking tonedeaf wine trips to Chianti country, while his major revenue program remain irrelevant in the national scene. More importantly Wharton didn't really flesh out how Guerrero had no qualifications to run a blue chip athletic program with a perennial top-15 football program with great history of winning Rose Bowls and an iconic hoops tradition.
Just as important Wharton completely failed to flesh out the real story of Guerrero's joke leadership in Westwood. It's not that difficult to look up the datapoints that show beyond all reasonable doubt that Guerrero is the worst AD in modern UCLA history. Somehow Wharton forgot to include the part about a story in his own paper that revealed how under Guerrero's incompetent leadership UCLA has become irrelevant in Los Angeles.
Wharton did not mention how notwithstanding UCLA's finishes in the Director's Cup standings, our two major revenue programs have been dumped into the gutter under Dan's incompetent leadership. As Fox71 wrote Chianti has "the most massive Oh-Fer in UCLA history" in terms of Rose Bowls or basketball championship teams seen by graduating classes. There are tons of other numbers to show total FAIL on the part of Guerrero.
Another top line note before the flip. Wharton forgot to include the line about UCLA alums being upset because our AD gets big money for mediocre results. Yes, no mention of Chianti being the highest paid athletic director in the Pac-12 despite the total degradation of the two major revenue programs under his horrific tenure at UCLA.
We have gone through number of details on Chianti's mismanagement before but just to refresh everyone's memory let's serve up some fresh reminders after the jump.
The basketball attendance figures have been in the dumps. His incompetent administration cannot sync up simple scheduling issues in order to optimize positive exposure of our major revenue programs. There is no way around to spin the ugly numbers around both hoops and football despite the pathetic excuses we keep hearing from Guerrero. You can check out more compelling data on the "unchecked decline" in our non-revenue sports from 2005onward here. We also read an inside account of Guerrero's lack of leadership at Morgan Center.
That was all before the Sports Illustrated nationally embarrassing UCLA, exposing Guerrero (and Howland) for wrecking UCLA basketball. While a crisis management hire by Chianti's department was able to inject some of their talking points through traditional media outlets, the excerpts above make it apparent that there is also pressure building on Chianti. He is already a national joke about new media outlets. Now number of tradmed reporters (except for hacks in the LA times) are seeing the writing of the wall. Let's keep up the pressure.
If you are an alum of UCLA, who believes in the spirit behind those four letters, you should feel sad. You should feel sad about how an incompetent leader like Guerrero has spit all over the legacies of Coach Wooden and burned his program to the ground. The signs Guerrero and Morgan Center's lenient oversight of Bruin athletics make it clear that Chianti is incapable of restoring order in Westwood.
It's clear what Guerrero and his minions are doing here. They are running to reporters who have no clue or interest in getting the real story out on demise of UCLA under its most incompetent AD. Guerrero will keep spinning the short term lines of Mora's recruiting class, the opening of "renovated Pauley," and the possibly of one time success in hoops with bunch of one and done mercenary recruits next years.
None of that should be good enough for Bruins alums to keep supporting the garbage we have seen from Westwood for almost a decade. This should be especially poignant at this time of the year - which is supposed to be the greatest time of the year in a sport, Bruins are supposed to be dominating in. Instead of worrying about top seeds in the Western region, we are being served up with bullshit spin on NIT and the promises of couple of one-and-done recruits next year.
This should never be acceptable to any Bruin alums who care about the spirit of those four letters. UCLA needs new leadership at the top of its athletic department, who can restore pride in Westwood, who actually has basic knowledge about the two major revenue sports, and can bring in a basketball coach who can actually live up the job duties that entails being the "caretaker" of the greatest college program ever built in America.
GO BRUINS.