Nice guy, but he could use a few more wins

I called him “Dullard,” and gave him almost the same kind of treatment Dan Evans, Paul DePodesta and Dodger Boy got.

From the start, the Page 2 criticism was relentless: UCLA hired a guy in over his head to coach the football team; give me a cup of coffee if I’m going to hope to stay awake to hear what this upstart has to say; Karl Dorrell is no Pete Carroll -- that’s for sure.

I watched his team roll over and play dead in bowl games against Fresno State and Wyoming.

Before beating Northwestern to cap a 10-2 campaign, Dorrell suggested he might never get a fair shake because of his race -- the only race concerning me, though, was the one he was losing to cross-town rival USC.

We’ve had our differences, and he’s had his setbacks, but it was never his fault AD Dan Guerrero gave someone with no head-coaching experience a job too big to handle.

Matched against Carroll, the Trojans’ unparalleled success in this new BCS era and an age of impatience, it’s shocking Dorrell has lasted this long.

He was known best for everything that went wrong until he swiped a national title opportunity from USC last year, a pretty good feat for someone considered an intern at best in comparison to Carroll, the one usually giving the lessons.

Then Dorrell’s team tanked against Florida State.

“Consistency,” Dorrell said before this season began, “is the next step we must take.”

The Bruins are now consistent, all right, in their inconsistency under Dorrell.

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WE’RE TALKING about a good man here, a great guy when you consider the public beatings at times and his ability to rebound with grace. Good things should happen to good people.

But Dorrell, good buddy, sure is making it difficult to support him any longer or note the growth spurts made over five years.

Point out the bright spot in a 44-6 loss to Utah, please, because from this vantage point it still remains elusive.

“It wasn’t anything about preparation,” Dorrell said when we got together Tuesday. “I told our players this team was going to be dangerous and desperate. What’s disappointing, our players got caught up with the fact ‘we’re UCLA and we’re ranked No. 11.’ ”

What’s disappointing was Dorrell’s players were advised of the trap they were about to enter, and they did not listen. These are his recruits, his players, his seniors and he has spent countless hours bonding with them, but they did not listen.

“From the players’ perspective,” Dorrell said, “I’m sure they’re saying, ‘yeah, he told us, but is that really what’s going to happen?’ I think they got the message; they just didn’t react to the message.”

That makes it sound as if it was the players who fell down on the job in Utah, and of course they did, although proper protocol probably calls for the head coach to take the hit.

“This is all my fault,” Dorrell said, indeed saying it not once but three or four times in our conversation. But when you’re still trying to establish yourself, your credibility and the right to remain employed, should you really take the blame if those who have been warned fail to take heed?

When you walked off that field, I asked, did you start to challenge yourself: “Maybe I don’t have what it takes to do this job?”

“I sleep well at night,” Dorrell said. “I did everything I could.”

Now I know what some folks will say, especially those gathering snippets of evidence to later demand his dismissal: He’s not holding himself accountable while pointing the finger at others.

But I was sitting across from him, looking into his eyes, listening to the competitive bite to his voice, finally thrilled to see the confidence he now has in his own abilities.

This wasn’t someone blaming his players, but rather challenging and demanding more from them.

“No question,” he said, “I’m going to be different. And this team should be able to handle it. I’m going to be more businesslike -- it’s time to just play and play better.”

It’s easy to call for Dorrell’s head because everyone has been expecting it to fall since his arrival. But for every step forward and then back, maybe the better measure of the coach will be which way his team moves now.

After all, it’s an interesting question when a team gets upset: Who should be blamed? The Bruins sputtered to open the season, and Dorrell had to throw things, both physically and verbally during a halftime tirade, to get his charges going. More a leader now than a dullard.

The Bruins pounced on BYU for a 20-0 lead, and then slacked off, a veteran team acting somewhat immaturely once again. They started slowly in Utah, and never recovered, but was that in the preparation or the execution?

“You have to play passionately every week -- every play,” Dorrell said, while recalling his days under Denver Coach Mike Shanahan, who also absorbed a few upset hits. “We go to Cincinnati, the Bengals aren’t playing very well, and we figure we’re going to win and go into the bye week in pretty good shape.

“But an NFL-record 278 rushing yards later from Corey Dillon sends us home a loser. Sometimes there’s no answer, ‘why?’ ”

It just happens, but too often and you’re no longer the head coach. And no question, Dorrell’s margin of error this season has now been reduced to almost nothing.

He still gets the benefit of the doubt here, but hiring a former criminal of sorts to recruit better athletes and coach the team’s receivers -- the guy’s rap sheet catching Guerrero by surprise -- is bothersome. A loss to Utah then becomes troublesome.

Now it’s on Dorrell to rally the troops, all right, all that on-the-job training coming into play, a successful season still very much within reach.

But admittedly, anything else now will be almost impossible to defend. Nice guy that he is, winning might not mean everything, but for Dorrell and the rest of this season, it does now.

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T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com. For previous columns by Simers, go to latimes.com/simers.