Guerrero called for delay of name

Two days. That’s how long it took Mississippi to find a new head football coach.

Fifteen days. That’s how long it took Washington State.

Sixteen days. That’s how long it took Northern Illinois.

Nineteen days. That’s how long it took Duke.

Twenty-five days and counting. That is how long it is taking UCLA, the self-styled heavyweight dropping in class by the day.

If this goes on any longer, the Bruins will be reduced to dueling Temple for the services of a coach with a 5-19 career record.

Oh, wait, that has already happened.

And UCLA was knocked out.

In what might have been the most embarrassing Bruins football news since the handicapped parking scandal, Al Golden announced this week he would rather stay with a program on the edge of irrelevancy than compete for a national title with a team that plays its home games at a local treasure.

“We are on the brink of something truly special here at Temple,” Golden said.

And that would be, um, what, achieving a winning record for the first time in 18 years?

Golden is a good young coach, but UCLA never should have chased him in the first place.

Because, for all its problems, UCLA is better than that.

And it’s time for UCLA to act like it.

The search has become the story, and the longer it continues, the weaker the program appears.

Dan Guerrero needs to end it, now.

The hiring of a football and basketball coach should be the only two times the UCLA athletic director is in the news, and Guerrero needs to own the moment.

This is when he convinces boosters and donors of the program’s strength. This is when he convinces recruits of the program’s savvy. This is when he provides the athletic program with a strong, decisive face.

Instead, nearly a month into the search, UCLA’s brow is furrowed and its mouth is agape.

And if you don’t think USC is e-mailing that photo to every high school football player in Southern California, then you don’t know USC.

So far, Guerrero has looked more like a beggar than a chooser, which means he either doesn’t understand football or doesn’t understand UCLA, charges he could disprove by simply making up his mind.

You want Rick Neuheisel? Fine, what are you waiting for?

You could have hired him three weeks ago, and every day that passes, his NCAA baggage grows larger and his credibility grows thinner.

He has led prolific offenses and has the type of engaging personality that might make the folks across town, however briefly, take notice.

But you must include a clause in his contract that calls for him to be fired at the first whiff of an NCAA investigation. As part of this clause, he must forfeit the remainder of his contract and pay back all bonuses.

You are going to have to put this guy on a leash tighter than the one Ben Howland puts on his basketball players. Your tolerance and Neuheisel’s wiggle room must both be at zero.

But if you still want him, go ahead, hire him, because waiting lessens his mandate and your dignity.

Or, maybe you want DeWayne Walker? Fine, then hire him. For two years, he ran the only part of the UCLA team that acted like a real team.

For two years, he was the only guy in the country to draw up a scheme to shut down USC.

For two years, he has led the recruiting of UCLA’s best athletes while serving as the architect of UCLA’s best moments.

And in his only game as a head coach recently, he came within a blocked field goal of upsetting Brigham Young in a bowl game.

There will be criticism that Walker isn’t polished enough or experienced enough. That doesn’t matter.

When it comes to coaching UCLA football, what matters is that the guy is tough enough.

He needs to fight for attention, fight for recruits, fight through tougher academic standards on his players and exorbitant housing prices for underpaid assistants.

“For this job, you need a survivor,” said Terry Donahue, who did it pretty well for 20 years. “You need someone willing to scratch and claw.”

Both Neuheisel and Walker qualify. Both would work.

What does not work is Guerrero’s stretching this out any longer, chasing guys beneath his school’s reputation, stretching for bowl-bound guys beyond it.

UCLA not only has to remember who it is, but also, who it isn’t.

Yeah, I’ll admit, I was suckered into thinking the Bruins had a shot at Oregon’s Mike Bellotti. I was so excited for Bruins fans, I even misread the statistics and wrote down the wrong record for Bellotti against Pete Carroll.

He is 2-3 against Carroll, OK? I’ll humbly tattoo it on the wrist that so many USC fans have slapped.

But I was even more misguided in the bigger picture, thinking Bellotti would actually abandon Phil Knight’s generous embrace for a place where he’d have to work much harder for fewer guarantees.

“This is still UCLA, it’s still a great job, but it’s become a more difficult job,” Donahue said in an interview Thursday. “It’s a state school and can’t pay as much. There is the high cost of living for assistant coaches. There are the increased academic requirements.”

And then, of course, there is the shadow.

“USC is the football school, UCLA is the basketball school, we all know that,” Donahue said before pausing. “But UCLA is still a great institution that can get great players from across the country.”

In other words, it’s a tough job, but somebody can do it, because somebody has done it.

By now, Dan Guerrero should have found a worthy candidate who not only understands all this, but embraces it, the challenges of competing down the street from college football’s best, the legacy to be owned by surviving it, the annual opportunity to do something they will never do at Temple.

The athletic program has won 100 national championships.

Should it be this hard to find one football coach?

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