It’s Dorrell’s Team, but the A.D.’s Show

Karl Dorrell says he doesn’t have any advice for Ben Howland. Heck, Dorrell says, “I thought I’d be asking Ben for advice. He’s been a successful head coach a lot longer than I have.�

Dorrell, gloriously giddy after conducting his first football practice as head coach of the UCLA Bruins, said it felt like a “fresh breeze� was blowing through the athletic department, these winds of basketball change.

Records aren’t kept of such things, but it had to be a record-breaking day at UCLA.

One new football coach has his first practice. One new basketball coach gets hired. Has any first-year athletic director at a program of the size, history and with the success of UCLA ever fired the football and basketball coaches in the same year? Not often. But Dan Guerrero did.

He came to UCLA and was quite clear. Guerrero wanted his teams to be well-grounded in fundamentals, to be consistent from start to finish, to make improvement day by day. We know how that turned out.

So Guerrero did what he said he would do. He has hired coaches he believes will give him the teams he expects. In a period of five months, Guerrero has written his UCLA legacy in ink. What happens with Dorrell and Howland will determine Guerrero’s future at UCLA. No one will be accountable except Guerrero.

Outside on Wednesday, Dorrell stood in the middle of a field wearing shorts and not noticing the chill. It felt like football weather. Gusty winds, dark clouds skittering overhead, spectators scurrying for sweaters and jackets.

And across the way, a few hundred yards at most, there was a press release typed and proofread and sitting in a computer, waiting to be sent out announcing ...

Ben Howland?

At 5:50 p.m. an e-mail was received by local media. It was sent from UCLA sports information director Marc Dellins. Surely this was it -- the announcement of the Thursday news conference to introduce new UCLA basketball Coach Ben Howland. Come on to Westwood, let the grilling begin!

And upon opening the e-mail it was ... blank.

A big oops. A not-ready-for-prime time e-mail. At 6:47 p.m. there was an apology e-mail sent. Sorry about that other one, just a mistake.

But there was Dorrell, earnest in his enthusiasm for the new basketball coach, then briefly sad as he recounted how his day had started at the funeral for the mother of Michael Pitre, a fullback from El Modena High in Orange who has signed with the Bruins.

Dorrell said he felt “honored� to have been able to attend the funeral and console a young man who will soon play for him. Dorrell said he was “privileged� to stand in the center of a football team, his football team, to be the man in charge.

So it didn’t matter to Dorrell that his debut was a secondary story.

Howland’s hiring was made official late Wednesday night. The brief delay -- in this age of instant communication we want our hirings and firings now -- allowed for instant grumbling.

“Couldn’t we have done better?� That’s what e-mailers and radio talk show callers were already asking. “Can’t we get a coach who’s been to the Final Four? We’re UCLA!�

This talk should stop. It will only reinforce the reputation of UCLA basketball fans as impossibly impatient, totally unable to be pleased, ready to run off another coach before his first press conference.

For three months most Bruins fans were hoping that Howland could be lured from Pittsburgh, with its new arena and top-ranked recruiting class and with the willingness to pay Howland over $1 million a year. So now he’s coming, finally, to Westwood. And there is whining.

As Dorrell noted, Howland “has had success at every level.�

Dorrell is here.

He arrived quietly, a surprise choice, a well-kept secret. He has stayed quiet, surfacing three times to speak about his new job but mostly Dorrell has kept moving -- recruiting, hiring, recruiting, planning, watching film, reading scouting reports.

Dorrell said he loved the sounds of his No. 1 backs being hit by his No. 1 defenders in his first practice. He said he was happy how the pace of practice got quicker and faster, the players learning by the second what Dorrell wanted.

He is eager to meet Howland, to ask the coach how he’s become a winner.

Howland will be asked at his first news conference about his messy departure from Pittsburgh. He will be asked about the pressure from the supposedly impossible-to-please UCLA fans, about the John Wooden legacy, about decrepit Pauley Pavilion. Dorrell will have his second practice.

And Guerrero will face an inquisition. Why didn’t you interview Tom Crean and Roy Williams and Rick Pitino? Why didn’t you get a coach who’s been to the Final Four? On and on.

The answers from Howland won’t matter. Or from Guerrero. What matters are the games. What matters is whether the teams have a plan. What matters is if the athletes make the school proud or embarrassed.

We’ll have our answers in 10 years or so. If Guerrero is still the athletic director, that’s our answer. The Guerrero age. It has begun.

Diane Pucin can be reached at [email protected].