Dorrell’s Bruins seem to have gotten the message

Race had nothing to do with Karl Dorrell’s latest advancement.

The Pac-10 race has been up and down all season long, and when it comes to race, what did you think I was talking about?

The Bruins are now in position with one game left to get an invite to anything from the Las Vegas Bowl to the Rose Bowl because Dorrell’s players paid no attention to message boards or who might be coaching them next year in favor of still winning this season.

On Oct. 29 UCLA Athletic Director Dan Guerrero, who said much the same thing about Steve Lavin before dismissing him at the end of the season, said, “I will be very interested to see how we finish the season.”

Since that statement, the injury-handicapped Bruins have lost by a touchdown at Arizona, lost by four points to top-10-ranked Arizona State and have now defeated a top-10 team in injury-handicapped Oregon.

Had the Bruins quit on Dorrell, the decision might be easy. Had the Bruins finished the season on a five-game losing streak, failing to become bowl-eligible, the decision might be easy.

But given the Bruins’ injury situation this year, hasn’t Dorrell done enough by making UCLA bowl-eligible?

“There’s so much negative going on out there,” Dorrell said, “but this group put all that aside and remained locked in on what they wanted to accomplish as a team.”

If Dorrell has done enough, then why does Guerrero continue to leave him hanging with USC and the distractions that come with a job in jeopardy?

“I’ve been very supportive of Karl,” Guerrero said. “I hired him, and I would love to see him accomplish all the things set out for him to accomplish in the beginning.

“But we have one more big game to play next week.”

Does Dorrell’s job hang on the outcome of next week’s game in the Coliseum against the Trojans?

“I want to continue to watch the team play and see how it plays out,” Guerrero said.

Has Guerrero made up his mind one way or another when it comes to Dorrell’s future at UCLA?

“No,” he said, but then is it really his decision to make?

In this era of big-time collegiate sports, and what a successful football program means when it comes to revenue and school image -- won’t it really be public perception that dictates the final decision here?

Guerrero’s job, as much as anything right now, is taking the pulse of Bruins fans, and weighing it against all that goes into firing one coach and hiring another.

If he dismisses Dorrell, he has to come up with the money to pay him off -- after giving him a new five-year contract before the 2006 season.

If he dismisses Dorrell, he will have to decide whether he can raise big money to lure a big-time coach to UCLA, who also must be agreeable to working with UCLA’s tougher admission standards -- thereby putting him at a competitive disadvantage.

If UCLA can’t come up with the big bucks -- and remember the Bruins didn’t pay Ben Howland big money until recently -- does it roll the dice and go once again with a second-tier candidate?

There haven’t been any headline-grabbing scandals to irritate the Bruins faithful and make Guerrero’s decision easier, but last week Dorrell did take an Internet beating.

Times columnist Kurt Streeter raised the issue of race recently near the end of a column in support of Dorrell, asking Dorrell if he thinks “he is not getting a fair shake because he is black?”

Streeter quoted Dorrell: “Let me put it this way, in every opportunity that I’ve had in my coaching career, it was never in my mind that I was dealing with a level playing field. I’ve had to do more to accomplish what I’ve accomplished. It’s getting better. But still, that’s just the way it is.”

“Well put,” wrote Streeter, while adding that he was “convinced that race plays a role in what some of you critics are saying. . . .

“Dorrell believes this too,” Streeter added, feeding a UCLA message board frenzy that had some Bruins fans believing Dorrell was now playing the race card as an excuse for his present plight.

Now some might dismiss message boards as forums for folks with no lives, but if Guerrero is taking the pulse of Bruins fans, it was not a good week for Dorrell.

And that might explain why Dorrell felt it necessary to put out a statement on the UCLA website: “This statement is to clarify issues arising from an article written about me this past Sunday . . .

“My comments regarding race issues were expressed in a general sense, and clearly not as an indictment about my experience at UCLA. I have seen a lot of issues in this profession over the last 20 years, but I have not had to deal with any such concerns during my time at UCLA.”

Dorrell publicly discussed his views on race in depth here two years ago the day before the Sun Bowl. Saturday, as he did then, he called race and everything that he has had to overcome in getting where he is today, “his edge,” or the “chip on his shoulder.”

“Would this feeling you have that you must do more than anyone else to be successful be any different if you were not an African American?” I asked.

“No, it wouldn’t,” he said. “I’ve just always felt that I needed to do more to get where I am.”

Whatever the reason for his “edge,” or the “chip on the shoulder,” he took the field against Oregon and did more than many probably expected.

The Bruins looked doomed when matched down the stretch against Oregon and USC, and although the Ducks suffered a devastating blow at the quarterback position, UCLA can tell you all about that.

“We found a way,” Dorrell yelled as he ran off the field a winner, raising the question, if Oregon Coach Mike Bellotti is as good as everyone says he is, how come he couldn’t find a way?

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