No Reason for Guerrero to Be All Riled Up

And you thought Bob Toledo ran some crazy plays.

UCLA’s search to replace him has thus far resembled a first-down, double-reverse pass from a freshman quarterback to a shaky receiver.

The quarterback is Dan Guerrero.

The receiver is Mike Riley.

This thing has trouble written all over it.

In hiring a new football coach, Guerrero has an opportunity that occurs at UCLA only every six years.

He’s trying to do it in six seconds.

By making one phone call.

To a guy who, as a head coach, is on a nine-game losing streak.

Several qualified candidates have emerged for a job that became vacant only this week, but Guerrero seemingly made up his mind last month.

An athletic director doesn’t fly cross-country to meet somebody hours after firing his old coach ...

He doesn’t set up that candidate with the chancellor before interviewing anybody else ...

That candidate doesn’t then turn down a much more lucrative job at his alma mater ...

Unless the match has already been made.

Forget this talk about an interview today with former Bruin receiver and current Denver Bronco assistant Karl Dorrell.

If Dan Guerrero hasn’t already chosen Mike Riley, then they’ve wasted a lot of winking and nodding and nudging.

Given that Guerrero has never been the boss of a football program before, this is sort of like a first-time home buyer signing a contract inside the first front door on the first day of his house-hunting trip.

C’mon, Dan. Not even an inspection contingency?

It’s not that Riley is a bad guy. He’s a great guy.

Riley, a secondary coach with the New Orleans Saints, looks and talks like a football guy, yet acts like a regular guy.

Recruits love him. Alumni want to hang out with him. The media generally adore him.

One of his ink-stained admirers was even pushing for him, in this section, earlier this week.

But there’s something those stories neglected to include.

It’s something that virtually every fawning story about Mike Riley fails to include.

His record.

In five years as an NFL and college head coach, he is 22-48.

Think about that.

Would any coach in America still have a job if, after five years, he had lost twice as many games as he’d won?

The spin on Riley is that he coached in those awful, impossible-to-win spots of Corvallis, Ore., and San Diego.

Funny, but after Riley left Oregon State, Dennis Erickson brought an energy that turned the Beavers into winners.

And after he left San Diego, Marty Schottenheimer brought a discipline that turned the Chargers into winners.

This is not to say that Riley, who earned his reputation largely on the blessing of former NFL guru Bobby Beathard, wouldn’t do well with UCLA’s great athletes.

But he’s not Jimmy Johnson or Bill Parcells.

And wouldn’t those have to be the only sorts of names that should make the UCLA athletic director blow off everyone else?

Such as, say, a Karl Dorrell?

There are two raps on the Bronco assistant coach, the first being that he has no college experience.

OK, so Riley has won eight more college games than Dorrell.

The second rap is that, because he is a former Bruin from a beloved Rose Bowl era of the early 1980s, he brings too much alumni baggage.

The theory goes, if you let this guy in, all sorts of former players come with him, hanging out at practice, walking the sidelines at games, calling Guerrero at home, thinking they own the joint.

To which every disillusioned former Bruin should say:

What is wrong with that?

It is precisely that sort of alumni involvement that helps USC football maintain its edge over UCLA football, even during those years when silly columnists claim otherwise.

The cliche is an absolute truth: In football, you are a Bruin for four years, but a Trojan for life.

It is this sort of Trojan alumni involvement that, while driving local media crazy with myopic correspondence, helps foster unity and maintain tradition.

Ask any former Bruin football player during the week of the USC-UCLA game. He will be dismissive of USC’s team, but jealous of its alumni’s pregame gatherings.

The critics who think Dorrell would be a threat to Guerrero certainly don’t think much of Guerrero’s toughness.

And they certainly discount Dorrell’s reported smarts, which should have earned him more than what appears to be a courtesy interview.

There are lots of other folks Guerrero could also have considered.

Why not give a serious interview to Washington State Coach Mike Price, who was contacted by UCLA on Friday?

Why not have a serious talk with former Bruin assistant Greg Robinson?

Why not ring up former Bruin assistant and Pac-10 vet Rich Brooks?

Why not spend a few more minutes, with a few more candidates, just to make sure that a guy with the .314 winning percentage and USC pedigree is the right person to run UCLA football?

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.