A third of nation’s black coaches meet on same field for game of consequence

It happens so infrequently one man is flying cross-country to witness it.

Volcanic eruption?

The comet Kohutek?

Would you believe: Two African American coaches going against each other in a major college football game.

“It is a rare sighting,” said Floyd Keith, executive director of the Black Coaches’ Assn.

It’s so every-now-and-then Keith is jetting in from Indianapolis to attend Saturday night’s game between Washington and UCLA at the Rose Bowl.

Because. . . ?

Karl Dorrell vs. Tyrone Willingham marks the only regular-season pairing of black head coaches this year.

When there are only six among 119 major colleges -- seven coaches of color when you add West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez -- a BCA director can’t pass up the chance.

Who knows, given the state of UCLA disenchantment, whether Dorrell will ever face Willingham again?

Keith jokes that watching UCLA-Washington allows him to see more than 30% of his workforce.

“That in itself tells you something,” he said.

The shame of Dorrell vs. Willingham, for the sake of an ongoing struggle, is that one black coach is going to lose.

Dorrell, reeling from one of his worst Bruin-tenure losses, needs a victory more than Willingham. And that makes this, in a societal sense, an uncomfortable backdrop.

Willingham enters the game with a 2-1 team, riding a relative high horse, given Washington’s sudden rise and Notre Dame’s sudden demise.

Willingham was the first black head coach hired, and then fired, by Notre Dame. He got his walking papers in 2004 after going 21-15 in three years at a school that historically afforded coaches a five-year opportunity.

Charlie Weis, the man who replaced Willingham, is winless in three games in his third season at Notre Dame. If the Irish finish 3-9 this year, which is a possibility, Weis will be 22-15 through three years.

All evidence indicates Weis will get a fourth year in South Bend. In 2005, seven games into his first season, Notre Dame extended Weis’ original six-year contract through 2015.

Weis was 5-2 at the time his contract was reworked.

Willingham started out 8-0 in 2002, his first year at Notre Dame.

“Did Tyrone get a renewal?” Keith asked.

If you’re thinking this bothers the head of the BCA, you are correct.

“I thought it was a premature dismissal to begin with,” Keith said of Notre Dame’s ouster of Willingham.

Keith added: “I don’t want to get into weighing Tyrone versus Charlie. That’s not what it’s about. Charlie just took a job. . . . Charlie is a good guy.”

What Saturday represents for Keith, Dorrell and Willingham is minority coaches getting not a better shake, but the same shake.

Dorrell, as a young assistant working his way up, used Stanford head coach Willingham as a role model.

“Tyrone has kind of been the patriarch in this movement,” Dorrell said. “He means a lot for this profession.”

Dorrell said Saturday’s game is more than just a battle of 2-1 Pacific 10 Conference schools.

“It’s much bigger than that from a national scope, and from a career scope for young people interested in coaching,” Dorrell said. “It’s really to keep the inspiration alive for them. . . . I think all that is real important.”

All sorts of lessons can be learned here.

For starters, there is humility.

Willingham was asked on this week’s Pac-10 coaches’ teleconference whether he got a kick out of seeing Notre Dame struggle this year.

“Why would I get a kick out of someone else’s misery?” Willingham said. “I don’t get a kick out of any of those discussions and would prefer that they don’t exist.”

There is also reality.

Keith says black coaches should be held to the same standard as white coaches and that means enduring the scrutiny that comes with the paycheck.

It pains Keith to see Dorrell, one of his six, come under fire after UCLA’s miserable 44-6 loss at Utah.

“I remember the ecstasy following [last year’s] USC win,” Keith said. “This team I’m sure is a lot better than it was last Saturday.”

He says, though, that minority coaches need to stand, or fall, on merit.

The numbers for minorities in college football remain lag-behind when you consider six out 32 head coaches in the National Football League coaches are black.

“The NFL is like four times ahead,” Keith said.

Saturday’s game, in many ways, is a celebration for the BCA.

It is also a distress signal.

And if UCLA loses, for Dorrell, it becomes more complicated than that.

Blitz package

* As a Florida Gator, Steve Spurrier was 14-1 against Louisiana State -- 3-0 as a player and 11-1 as coach.

On Saturday, though, for the first time, the always cocksure Spurrier leads South Carolina into Baton Rouge. And this time Spurrier is talking a different game.

Spurrier told his team this week that it wouldn’t be the end of the world if his Gamecocks lost to the second-ranked and heavily favored Tigers.

Excuse us. . . Spurrier said what?

“I don’t want our guys to go down there with false belief that we have a great chance to win this game,” Spurrier said Wednesday. “Sometimes you’ve got to be realistic.”

This could be a Baton Ruse. South Carolina under Spurrier has already displayed a knack for over achievement, having already upset Georgia in Athens this year and last year nearly toppling eventual national champion Florida in Gainesville.

Really, what does Spurrier have to fear? LSU has only outscored three opponents, 137-7.

South Carolina can expect, at Tiger Stadium, one of the loudest game-day environments in sports.

“When it rumbles,” LSU Coach Les Miles said, “it makes the clothes that you’re wearing move.”

* No hyphen schools for these guys. UCLA and Washington, playing this week, are among only five schools that have never played a I-AA opponent since the divisional format was established in 1978. The other schools are USC, Michigan State and Notre Dame.

* Payback II? California has already exorcised last year’s humbling road loss to Tennessee by handily winning this year’s rematch in Berkeley. This week, Cal seeks revenge on lowly Arizona, which pulled off a major upset last year in Tucson. It was a classic trap game for Cal, obviously looking ahead to its week-later showdown against USC. Cal, ranked No. 8, took a 17-3 lead over Arizona but got outscored, 21-3, in the second half in a 24-20 defeat.

* Bureau of bad stats: Weis is the first Notre Dame coach to lose five straight games since Hugh Devore in 1963. That was also the last season the Irish lost to Navy. Notre Dame has beaten Navy 43 straight games in the series.

Weis has lost his last five games by 20, 27, 30, 21 and 38 points. The last Irish coach to start 0-3 was Bob Davie in 2001. Devore was fired after his 1963 season and Davie was let go after 2001.

* Weis wasn’t the only coach who sent his team back to training camp this week. Dick Tomey of San Jose State, disgusted with his team’s 0-3 start, put his Spartans through a full-pads workout on Sunday after a 37-0 loss to Stanford.

San Jose State, which went 9-4 last year and won the New Mexico Bowl, has been outscored, 116-17, in road losses to Arizona State, Kansas State and Stanford. The good news: San Jose State’s next three games are against Utah State, UC Davis and Idaho.

* For what it’s worth: USC is back on top in the unofficial Bowl Championship Series standings tabulated by the website that bills itself as “BCS Guru.” USC moved past LSU by the margin of .8610 to .8597. The first official BCS standings will be released Oct. 14.

* You won’t get any argument from UCLA regarding Utah sophomore safety Robert Johnson being chosen the Football Writers Assn. of America’s defensive player of the week. In Utah’s 44-6 win over UCLA, Johnson had six tackles, two interceptions and forced a game-turning touchback on Bruins receiver Marcus Everett.

* This week’s look-out alert: Arkansas State over Tennessee? The Sun Belt has already scored upsets with Troy over Oklahoma State and Florida Atlantic against Minnesota.

* Maybe he has a point: Quarterback Demetrius Jones, who transferred from Notre Dame to Northern Illinois last week, on his decision: “College coaching is a business,” Jones told the South Bend Tribune. “But so is playing. So is playing.”

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com