Let me tell you a little story of a college football program. Behind the leadership of a respected former NFL assistant coach, this team fluttered annually between decent and pretty good in the mid-2000s. It received invites to five bowl games and even won two of them, but never found itself finishing in the top 15 of the AP Poll. After several years of good, but not great, performance, the program decided to go in a different coaching direction. The new coach came in and generated a lot of excitement, even taking the team to bowl game in just his second year with the team. But despite the successful season paired with two straight years of top 15 recruiting classes, things never seemed to click, and the program came to be plagued by consecutive losing seasons. If things weren’t bad enough, the new coach couldn’t tally a single win against the school’s arch-rival.
Recognize the program? Probably not. That’s the story of UCLA between 2003 and 2011, the squad the Virginia football team will face this weekend in Pasadena. But swich top-15 recruiting class with top-25 recruiting class and two bowl wins with three, and you have the story of Virginia football during essentially the same time period.
Like with Virginia and previous coach Al Groh, the Bruins found themselves a respectable coach in Karl Dorrell, who took UCLA to five consecutive bowl games (Groh took the Cavaliers to five bowls, but over the course of six years). Both coaches were returning to college after time in the NFL, and both were able to pretty much maintain the success their respective programs found under previous head coaches — both tallied a winning percentage of just over .500 during their tenures.
Looking for something fresh, UCLA hired Rick Neuheisel, an offensive-minded coach who had a successful stint at the helm of the University of Washington before taking a few years in the NFL as an assistant with the Ravens. It wasn’t that Dorrell, was particularly bad — he finished in the top half of the Pac-10 in each of his campaigns. But UCLA thought the program needed a bit more than what they were getting, just like Virginia did at the end of Groh’s tenure. Likely contributing to the decision was performance in the school’s most important game of the year. Dorrell, like Groh, only tallied one win against the school’s arch-rival — in his case, USC.
Mike London’s hiring and performance was remarkably similar to that of Neuheisel’s. The two men, born less than a year apart, generated a lot of early excitement, welcoming some of the best recruiting classes in the nation. According to 247sports, UCLA welcomed the 10th and 11th best classes in 2009 and 2010, respectively, and while not as impressive, London still brought in two consecutive top-25 classes of his own upon entering the program. As noted above, after each coach took their team to a bowl in their second season, neither returned to one. And neither coach tallied a single victory over their respective rival during their tenures.
And that’s where the stories diverge. After two straight losing seasons following his trip to the Eagle Bank bowl, Neuheisel was fired. He simply wasn’t winning, and especially wasn’t winning the games that counted most. UCLA decided that stellar recruiting wasn’t enough. In contrast, London tallied a pair of losing seasons after his bowl trip, but the University decided to keep him on. He then posted a third straight losing season, and Craig Littlepage decided to again stay true to his coach.
After Neuheisel’s dismissal, UCLA hired Jim L. Mora, son of the famed NFL coach Jim E. Mora known for the “Playoffs?!? Don’t talk about playoffs!!” rant in the ‘90s. For UCLA, the rest is history. In his three seasons with UCLA, Mora has won at least nine games in each and already has two bowl wins. The team has gotten better in each successive year, finishing No. 10 in both the coaches and AP polls last season, and comes into this season ranked No. 13 in the AP. To cap off his successful tenure, Mora has never once fallen to USC.
All of this makes me wonder what could have been for the Cavaliers over the past two years. Sure, UCLA football is a bit more storied and expectations are higher, but London has been unequivocally worse than about a dozen coaches that have been fired over the past couple seasons. Despite the positives — a bowl win and two outstanding recruiting classes — UCLA recognized it was time to move on, and the decision paid off. I’m convinced that Virginia could find its own version of a Jim Mora — a talented NFL assistant that never really took off as a head coach in the pros.
I’ll be pulling for Mike London this year with all my heart because I can’t stand to see my beloved Cavaliers continuously disappoint. But for that exact same reason, I’m furious at the athletic department for not pulling the plug sooner. As painful as it may be to let go of London, UCLA reminds us why the choice is worth making.
Matt Comey is a weekly Sports Columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at m.comey@cavalierdaily.com. Follow him on Twitter @matthewcomey.
A previous version of this column referred to UCLA's Rick Neuheisel as "an up-and-coming wiz from the Baltimore Ravens." However, Neuheisel had already established himself in the college ranks by the time of his hire by the Bruins, winning the Rose Bowl in 2000 at Washington.
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