Saying goodbye part of business

All signs point to Saturday at the Coliseum being Pete Carroll versus Karl Dorrell for the last time.

No venom or joy here; it’s just a calculated observation.

It could be Dorrell leaving UCLA or Carroll leaving USC or Carroll and Dorrell leaving.

It could be, if you believe the latest negotiating-ploy baloney, USC leaving the Coliseum.

As you hum your alma mater this weekend, also never forget this about the college business: it’s a business.

UCLA might make a business decision to let Dorrell go even though he has a winning record and has largely succeeded in cleaning up the school’s off-the-field problems.

Carroll might make a business decision to tend to unfinished pro football business.

Don’t feel sorry for anybody here drawing a paycheck except the about-to-be-uprooted-again assistant coaches and their families.

It’s already been a crazy and sometimes sadly comical year in college coaching. Twelve coaches have already either “retired” or been fired, and the feeling is athletic directors are just getting fired up.

There hasn’t been a year like this since . . . last year, when there were 23 major-college coaching changes.

Once, when Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden roamed the Earth -- what, they’re still roaming? -- coaches would get years to tie up loose ends.

Not anymore.

“We’re not a patient sports populace today,” former Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer said Wednesday. “Some athletic directors think paying a coach $4 or $5 million assures winning, but it doesn’t have a thing to do with it.”

It is rare these days when an athletic director isn’t overpowered by internal and external influences. Virginia Tech stuck with Frank Beamer until bad ball became Beamer Ball. Kirk Ferentz went 4-19 in his first two years at Iowa. Then, his 2002 squad went 11-2.

Many athletic directors, though, keep chasing championships with checkbooks.

Mississippi had a perfectly good coach in David Cutcliffe before ousting him to hire Ed Orgeron, known as the “Madman” in some Oxford quarters (usually the fourth). It seems fitting Ole Miss would replace a Madman with a Nutt (Houston), who was going to get fired at Arkansas until he beat No. 1 Louisiana State. Then, it was Nutt who magnanimously walked away.

Alabama didn’t fire Mike Shula and then pay Nick Saban $4 million this year to go 6-6 with a loss to Louisiana Monroe, but that’s what happened.

“I wonder how the AD feels about his $4-million coach getting beat by a coach that makes $400,000?” Switzer mused about the pay difference between Saban and Louisiana Monroe Coach Charlie Weatherbie.

Money has made everyone gelatin-brained. Boosters are raising more of it and coaches are making more of it. Media intensity has increased and the Internet, as a fast-twitch carrier of fan disenchantment, has just about wiped out the Postal Service.

Expectations are higher than the nosebleed seats at Neyland Stadium in Tennessee.

“I look at the people that hire and fire coaches, truly, most have never played the game,” Switzer said. “They’re doctors, regents, lawyers, never returned a punt back. It’s an ego trip for them. Their friends at the country club say they need to fire a coach.”

Successful coaches -- or those we thought were -- leverage their precious power into sweetheart deals.

Notre Dame Coach Charlie Weis signed a multimillion, multi-year contract extension seven games into his first season after a loss to USC.

Because of the buyout money involved, Weis’ job appears safe after a 3-9 season.

Chan Gailey had six winning seasons at Georgia Tech but went winless against Georgia -- so he got the buyout boot.

What is success, anyway?

“Some programs have an inflated value of who they should be and never have been,” Switzer said.

Did Switzer have any program in mind?

“Texas A&M;,” he said. “Texas A&M; has never won.”

But Texas A&M;, which ran out R.C. Slocum to get to Dennis Franchione, has now run out Franchione to get to . . . Mike Sherman?

Everyone gets what they deserve . . . except the players, who generate the revenue and end up with the fewest options.

What happens to sophomore Timmy Trojan if his coach bolts (no Chargers pun intended) for a better deal?

Timmy can’t play at another major college program without sitting out a year.

Raymond Carter, a promising young UCLA tailback, injured his knee before his career got started in Westwood.

If Dorrell loses his job, he gets $2 million and has unlimited options.

Carter’s best hope is to leave UCLA with a degree -- and without a limp.

There are one-time transfer exemptions for other sports -- but not the revenue producers: football, basketball and, starting next year, baseball.

Mike Matthews, the Pacific 10 Conference’s compliance director, does not dispute the presented facts.

“Students don’t have the same right to leave right away or play right away,” he said.

The argument always given, that the player should choose an institution over a coach, is only off-set by the reality of a quarterback who only wants to play at South Carolina because Steve Spurrier is the coach.

Switzer, and he would know, said it would be crazy if you let football players out of their scholarships every time the coach left for NFL money.

He said there would be mass raids on opposing campuses.

“You couldn’t let them pack up their suitcases,” he said. “It would be devastating.”

After Hurricane Katrina, some coaches were accused of poaching on displaced Tulane players.

There is no easy way around it.

Matthews says, in return for gate receipts and bowl money, schools offer players a free education -- not a bad trade-off for two-a-day workouts and, some weeks in Conference USA, Tuesday night games. Schools also invest large amounts of money in player recruitment.

One answer might be to allow a player a free opt-out transfer so long as he does not follow his coach to a new school, but Matthews says that idea is fraught with problems.

“In theory, there’s no way a coach could ever leave because there are new recruiting classes every year,” he said.

In the end, the revenue-producer athlete can only hope the nice coach who sits in his living room in December chooses to spend the same five years on campus.

But what if the Chargers call?

Or the athletic director in Westwood is fixing to bring in a coach who may not like you?

Or some guy in a suit wants to move all your homes games next year to Pasadena?

Hey, remember, it’s only business.

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Blitz package

Here’s a shock: Bowl Championship Series coordinator Mike Slive said on a Wednesday conference call the system is working. “It’s the greatest regular season in all of sports,” Slive, also the Southeastern Conference commissioner, said of college football. “I know it’s trite to say there’s a playoff every weekend, but there is.”

Slive reiterated there is no interest among college presidents for an NFL-style playoff but behind-the-scenes work continues on selling a modified “plus-one” model -- one extra game after the BCS bowls.

The earliest the model could be implemented is 2011, after the current four-year television deal with Fox expires, but there is one teeny-weenie hitch.

The Pac-10 and Big Ten conferences are adamantly opposed to expansion of the current system and have threatened to retreat to their pre-BCS partnership days. “Some other people would have to decide they like it,” Slive admitted.

So, other than that, why don’t we plan on it?

Slive is open to a plus-one for at least one very good reason: In 2004, it would have given undefeated Auburn, which got left out of the BCS title game, an extra shot at the national title. Slive compares it to the rallying cry one once uttered about a standoff in San Antonio that later was worked into the title of a bowl -- the Alamo.

“We remember Auburn,” Slive said.

* USC Coach Pete Carroll said this week he didn’t think his team was out of the national title race. Reaction: Huh?

The Trojans are No. 8 in this week’s BCS standings. Three schools ranked ahead of USC have already finished their regular seasons. In terms of the BCS, USC is o-u-t.

But wait, what about the Associated Press poll, which broke ranks in 2003 and crowned USC as champion?

OK, here’s our best shot at it: First, USC needs two-loss Georgia to get in the title game against Ohio State. That would require West Virginia and Missouri losing this weekend, which is not impossible. USC then needs Louisiana State to lose the SEC title game, Virginia Tech to lose the Atlantic Coast title game and Kansas to lose its bowl game.

Then, let’s say Georgia beats Ohio State in a game uglier than the Pittsburgh vs. Miami NFL game Monday night, which is going to be tough because this year’s BCS title game is in a dome. But say it happens, and USC wipes out Illinois in the Rose Bowl. The AP could, in that scenario, make USC its champion -- but don’t order the rings yet.

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com