Analyze this one, Dorrell-watchers

PULLMAN, Wash. -- You can’t really tell which straw will end up breaking Karl Dorrell’s back.

You can’t read a lot into Athletic Director Dan Guerrero’s unwillingness to be interviewed after the Bruins’ embarrassing 27-7 defeat by the heretofore hapless Washington State Cougars on Saturday.

“I’d rather not,” Guerrero said. “You understand.”

We understand that watching UCLA football is like riding one of those huge roller coasters at Magic Mountain. Way up. Way down. Always mindless.

They are UCLA. Beat some decent teams. Washington, Oregon State, the Stanford conquerors of USC. Take a really good Cal team right out of the Pac-10 Conference mix last Saturday. But lose along the way to then-winless Utah team and 0-5 Notre Dame.

And then, there was Washington State, 0-4 in the conference, 2-5 overall, with its only wins against San Diego State and Idaho. After this one, they are going to need to start sending along Prozac in the UCLA season-ticket package. Instead of expanding Rose Bowl seating, the Bruins need to ponder couches with therapists.

You also can’t read a lot into Dorrell’s postgame comments. He is stoical, predictable, always well-contained, no matter the disaster. You kind of want him to throw a bunch of shoulder pads, or pound on the wall and say that he’s had it, that this week’s practices will be hell. Or tell a reporter to go stick his question in his ear.

That would be all so human, so real.

But we get references to two key players who got hurt, and of course that was a factor. But UCLA ought to be able to drive a van around the campus on a Friday afternoon, pick up 35 students who look fairly healthy and come up here and beat the Cougars. Which is a harder sell to a prospective player, the bright lights of Los Angeles or the vast nothingness that surrounds Pullman?

Yes, the Cougars played hard and played well. And yes, this is like going to the moon to play a game -- did those loud and inebriated fans in their deer-hunting clothes really come to watch a football game? Or when they chanted at the end of the game to the Bruins: “We own you! We own you!”, did they mean the entire team or just their hides?

How long will Bruins fans keep swallowing and taking deep breaths? How long can Ben Howland and the success of his basketball team take the pressure off Dorrell? Is a chance to stomp the Trojans for a second year in a row enough the keep the pilot light burning? Can Westwood get goose-bumpy again over the Emerald Bowl?

Dorrell said he had no answer for his team’s tendency to win a big one and fall off the ledge.

“As soon as I get one, I’ll tell you,” he said.

He also said things such as:

“It just wasn’t a very good performance.”

“We didn’t play the caliber of game we should have.”

“We could point a lot of fingers in a lot of directions, but I always start with me. We’ve got to coach better.”

His overall summary of the situation was: “We’ve just got to keep coaching.”

Well, that could become problematic. Guerrero hired him, loves him and has him under contract through 2011. But there is always that paragraph in coaching contracts that contains the word “buyout.” The cost of that in the next two years has been estimated at $2.05 million, and while Bruins are known to part with a buck a lot less quickly than some of their fellow big-school powers, the natives certainly are restless, and some of those natives have big bank accounts.

Saturday’s Washington State loss, the Plop in the Palouse, leaves Dorrell’s six-year mark at UCLA at 34-24. He’s gotten the Bruins to four different bowl games, and lost three. The best bowl they have played in is . . . well, there isn’t one.

That kind of showing may be OK at Indiana or Vanderbilt, or, well, Washington State. But log on to dumpdorrell.com and see just how OK it is in Westwood.

A fine time was had by all here Saturday, if you were a Cougar.

The mascot started it by driving in on a motorcycle, almost like he knew the rest of the day would be easy riding. A senior quarterback named Alex Brink passed for 271 yards, picking apart a UCLA defense that surrendered 545 total yards, and you had to look close to make sure he wasn’t Dan Marino. A running back named Dwight Tardy, never late to hit the hole, entered the game with 462 yards in seven games and got 214 more. UCLA made him into a reincarnation of Red Grange.

There is a silver lining. Three of the Bruins’ next four games are against ranked teams -- Arizona State, Oregon and USC. UCLA will probably be underdogs in each, which is right where they like to be.

But get the Bruins into one of those Emerald or Sun or Las Vegas bowls against somebody like East Bumpkin U. and they’re dead.

They have become the Never-Beat-A-Team-You-Are-Supposed-To Gang. Their leader is the We-Just-Have-To-Do-Better-Next-Time Coach.

Their fans? They are the people you see, often late on a Saturday night, off in a corner somewhere, shaking their heads and talking to themselves.

And the person who may be able to change all this? He’s the one in the big campus office, weighing straws.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.