UCLA’s Dan Guerrero still thinking higher, not fire

Here’s how his bio reads on the UCLA athletics website: “In [Dan] Guerrero’s nine years as athletic director, he has clearly established a pattern of ‘image and substance’ that few in his profession can match.”

And here I thought he was best known for going 0 for 2 when it comes to hiring football coaches.

One year ago Guerrero’s bio also stated: “Guerrero is one of the most respected and talented administrators in all of intercollegiate athletics.”

This year’s bio writer dropped the word “talented.”

I’ll have to make a note to check to see how UCLA has downgraded Rick Neuheisel’s bio.

Guerrero has already fired two football coaches. He arrived, watched Bob Toledo’s team go 8-5 and dismissed him.

What would Neuheisel give right now to finish 8-5?

Guerrero replaced Toledo with Karl Dorrell, but Guerrero says Dorrell “didn’t turn the corner,” so he brought in Neuheisel.

Guerrero’s two football hires are a combined 51-52.

Maybe UCLA is winning all kinds of tennis and water polo championships — accolades galore for Guerrero — and maybe no one is better in NCAA meetings than Guerrero. But don’t bore me.

It is football, and the money that football generates, that lets us know how an athletic director is doing.

Guerrero says an AD can be successful in 19 other sports, not do so well in football and still be considered a success. That sounds as if he’s describing himself.

Football is the reason why schools are jumping from one conference to another, everyone trying to capitalize on the popularity of football and get more TV money.

A look around the Rose Bowl on Saturday suggests UCLA football isn’t so popular.

“I’m going to talk about image and substance,” he begins, and I guess we know who wrote his bio.

“Image in a lot of respects is how you are perceived,” he says, “While substance is what you produce.

“Image is also how you represent your university. Look at all the schools that have had success on the football side over the last three to five years. A lot of them have sat in front of the Committee on Infractions. No one wants to win more than us, but we’ll continue to articulate that we want to do it the right way.”

So this is what it’s like when doing it the right way?

“Where we are from a football standpoint is disappointing to everyone,” he says. “Can we turn that around? Obviously, we have to believe we can.

“There’s solid justification for the [football] hires that I’ve made. You want the outcome to be different, but I don’t regret the hires that I made.”

The Bruins were 49-32 under Toledo, including a 20-game win streak, but the program was bedeviled by a series of discipline problems when Guerrero arrived.

“We were clearly a program that was dysfunctional,” is how Guerrero puts it. “It was not a healthy environment.”

Guerrero turned to Dorrell, who had never been a head coach, seemingly placing more importance on Dorrell’s being a former Bruins wide receiver.

“There’s no question,” Guerrero says now that it was a gamble hiring Dorrell. “The big question was, could he turn the corner with this program? It didn’t happen.”

Enter Neuheisel, 16-24 so far to Dorrell’s 35-28, and as Guerrero says with a laugh, “Patience is no longer something you’re going to find among the brethren out there. But right now we’re in May; we’re not even to the All-Star break yet.”

And it still looks as if the Dodgers have a better chance of making it to the World Series than the Bruins.

“You like to see incremental development and us getting stronger at the end,” Guerrero says. “I like Rick. I want Rick to succeed. I didn’t hire him to be here four years.”

Does Neuheisel have to go to a bowl to keep his job?

“That’s really our goal going in, but I really don’t want to speculate where we are right now,” he says.

Here’s where the Bruins are right now: They are 1-2 and many folks think Neuheisel is already a goner.

“Our expectation is that we turn the corner this year and get back into a December game,” says Guerrero, clear as an AD can put it without really putting it to his head coach.

“I think this team can do it,” he adds, and interesting that his bio mentions nothing about his being a dreamer.

Does he feel any heat? Guerrero says, “No.”

Someone is not doing their job, Bruins fans, if Guerrero isn’t feeling the heat. Or have things gone so badly at UCLA, most folks no longer care?

Wait until Pauley Pavilion opens again and folks find out what it’s going to cost to sit inside. But that’s whining and crying for another day.

Guerrero starts talking finances when pressed about football, a subtle reminder of an administrative job well done, and the donors are still hanging with him.

“When I started here our athletic budget was $42 million; it’s $66 million today. We get like $2.5 million from the university in student fees, and that’s it. The rest of the money is generated through donations, sponsorships, TV revenue, NCAA revenue sharing and gate receipts.

“We’ve moved the needle considerably under rather difficult economic times. We’ve got the TV deal coming in next year, so we’re going to get healthy in a lot of ways.”

UCLA currently gets $6 million in TV money; the new deal averages $25 million a year over the next 12. So how much will it take to hire Urban Meyer?

“I’m not going to talk about getting a new coach,” he says. “That wouldn’t be appropriate.

“But if you’re talking about schools in the conference and national champions, yeah, we can compete with them [financially]. That is not a deterrent in any way, shape or form to keep us from getting where we want.”

In getting where UCLA wants to go, as deterrents go, what’s worse?

Keeping Neuheisel or letting Guerrero hire another football coach?

t.j.simers@latimes.com