Jim Mora started something at UCLA, but finishing is what matters

Jim Mora is sitting on the edge of a chair in a tiny, windowless room, a place better suited for a Homeland Security chat than a newspaper interview.

The setting, in a space adjacent to UCLA’s sports information department, is as close as an outsider can get to the football coach’s upstairs office without proper clearance and possibly a retina scan.

Mora, 51, is always busy, nearly always serious, and at times alarmingly intense. And sure enough, the baseball cap he’s wearing, the brim frayed from all the tugging, is pulled down so tight that it barely reveals his eyes.

But now he’s wearing a smile rather than his just-try-me smirk .

He is relaxed, about as relaxed as he gets while the season is still being played out.

Credit the scheduled topic of conversation: UCLA’s football season.

And why shouldn’t that put Mora at ease?

The Bruins take a record of 9-3 into Friday’s Pac-12 championship game against Stanford. A Rose Bowl bid dangles before them.

Anyone who says they thought this was possible in Mora’s first season probably would be lying. Before he arrived, there was a culture in Westwood that needed to be overcome. Everyone had talked about it. Mora saw it watching his adopted players run sprints during off-season conditioning.

“Almost to a man they would let up right before the line,” Mora recalls. “That’s not where you finish. You’re finished when you cross the line.”

That’s a proper metaphor for the Bruins’ football season too, because they haven’t crossed the line yet. But a victory over Stanford puts them in the Rose Bowl for the first time since the 1998 season.

So what has changed since last season, when the Bruins finished 6-8? Brett Hundley became the starting quarterback and a major difference maker, but he was already part of the program, having redshirted last year. Johnathan Franklin, now the school’s career rushing leader, was already in place before this season. So was linebacker Anthony Barr, an All-Pac-12 choice as a junior this season, though he played offense his first two years.

What’s truly new are Mora and the coaches on his staff.

“Jimmy Mora will kick your [butt] when it needs to be,” says former NFL linebacker Gary Plummer, who knew Mora when he was a young assistant for the San Diego Chargers. “But he will kick himself in the [butt] just as much.”

Mora was not Athletic Director Dan Guerrero’s first choice after Rick Neuheisel was fired. Nor was he the second choice.

Mora coached in the NFL for 25 seasons, but he had enjoyed limited success as a head coach. He took the Atlanta Falcons to the NFC title game in 2004, his first season, but he had an overall record of 32-34 in four seasons as a head coach — three with the Falcons and one with the Seattle Seahawks.

Still, Guerrero said he was impressed from the first interview. “He came armed with a this-is-the-way-to-do-it manual,” Guerrero says.

Mora does not mince words. He has an engaging and friendly personality, but also a directness that can be caustic.

He had yet to assume day-to-day command of the program when UCLA players went “over the wall,” a tradition of ditching practice during bowl game preparations.

Mora’s reaction: “If they feel they want to skip over the wall, they might as well keep going.”

So much for that tradition.

The pushing and prodding continued. Penalties for missing morning workouts escalated for repeat offenders, with teammates who play the same position sharing the punishment.

“Those kids will sense a person who is not genuine,” Mora says. “I am what I am. I don’t fake it. If I’m angry, I’m angry. If I’m happy, I’m happy. They know I have their best interests at heart.”

Players feared him at first — and still may — but they were thirsty for direction.

“He took a bunch of guys who were kind of lost and got us together,” senior cornerback Aaron Hester says. “He showed us how to play the game.”

The winning not only has players in lock step, but also has mollified a typically grumbling UCLA fan base.

“There is going to be some skepticism when a new coach comes in,” Mora says. “When I was hired, I’m sure some of those high-priced football donors were like, ‘Wait a minute, who’s this guy?’ Human nature says, well, I’m just going to hold on to my wallet here for a minute until I see what’s going on.”

Finding that skepticism now would be hard.

The Bruins benefited from a schedule that included Rice and Houston, as well as Pac-12 doormats Colorado and Washington State. Fifth-ranked Oregon was not on the Bruins’ path.

Mora can’t be faulted for the schedule. And he can be credited with the Bruins’ winning games they too often lost in the past. For example, UCLA had lost five in a row and 12 of 13 to crosstown rival USC before its 38-28 victory this month.

Sustaining the success will be the challenge. Karl Dorrell had a 10-2 season in 2005, his third season, and was fired in 2007. But the program now has a different feel.

Mora says he was looking for “a commitment to doing the things that are necessary to win” from the school. UCLA replaced the uneven synthetic turf at the practice field and upped pay for assistant coaches, and Guerrero is pushing plans for a football-only facility.

“Dan told me, ‘Pauley Pavilion is done, we’ve got to keep going,’” Mora said. “There is an urgency.”

Mora understands urgency. It’s the way he lives.

“He is definitely a type-A guy,” Plummer says. “But it’s a positive intensity. In San Diego, when he was the defensive backs coach, he would be yelling at the wide receivers coach, ‘You can’t beat my DBs!’ Everything about him is competitive.”

That doesn’t always make for a smooth ride. In Atlanta, Mora feuded with the media and tripped over his own statements.

“I learned if I let that stuff affect me, I am not at my best,” Mora says.

Sometimes he can’t help himself. It’s a family trait.

Jim E. Mora, his father, is a former New Orleans and Indianapolis head coach who is perhaps best known for a rant — “Playoffs. You kidding me?! Playoffs?” — now used in a popular beer commercial.

The apple, Jim L. Mora says, didn’t fall far from the tree.

Asked if there is a voice in his head that tries to stop him, Mora says, “Maybe he’s yelling at me and I don’t hear him soon enough. I’m working on it. I’m getting better at it.”

There have been a handful of uncomfortable moments this season. Some were benign, such as when he chewed out his assistants in front of players during training camp. Others were not, such as when he publicly dressed down a UCLA sports information assistant.

In August, as Mora talked about campus safety being part of his recruiting pitch, he added, “We don’t have murders a block from campus.” There was an easy connection to two USC students who were killed near campus last spring.

Mora apologized the next day.

“I don’t want to embarrass my son,” Mora says. “My son is very levelheaded and he’s very smart. He reads everything. I remember what it was like in his shoes.”

After the murder comment, Mora received a text from his 17-year-old son, Cole: “Dad, shut up.”

“He’s not afraid to say ‘stop,’” Mora says, laughing.

There was an element in Westwood that was not ready for some of the quirks in Mora’s personality, but now his Bruins are one win from the Rose Bowl.

Time to relax a little?

Not a chance.

“To me, it’s a week-to-week proposition,” Mora says. “I’m not jaded, I’m just realistic. I have been in this business since the day I was born.

“If you win, that’s good. If you don’t, it’s a house of cards.”

chris.foster@latimes.com

Twitter: @cfosterlatimes