Bumped from the diaries. Summer just started yesterday. But the diary section is already on fire. Keep these coming guys. GO BRUINS. -N

By that title, I'm not speaking of what will happen when Dorrell is fired but what has happened whenever Dorrell leads his charges out of the confines of the Rose Bowl. I believe that the two are intertwined: what happens when Dorrell's Bruins hit the road should lead Guerrero to ask Karl to hit the road on his own after this season.

Reading some of the factual and alleged factual posts on Dorrell's record, led me to report something that's been on my mind. I think we can all agree that winning on the road is harder than winning at home. A lot of teams are very good at home, but what separates good teams from mediocre teams is that the good ones compile a reasonably good record away from home. For example, a .500 road team who goes 6-0 at home would finish with a 9-3 record, which I think would be a good record in any year and very nice if it were a typical year. A team that finishes below .500 on the road cannot finish better than 8-4. Teams that finish well above .500 have a chance for 10-2, 11-1 etc.

How good is Dorrell? Well, in terms of winning on the road, it's not good, not good at all, I'm afraid. In his tenure, the Bruins are 20-5 while wearing the home blues in the Rose Bowl, but only 9-16 in all other games.

Some of you will say, "yeah, but we've played some tough teams on the road, and we shouldn't expect to win those games." Okay, fine. Let's breakdown that 9-16 road and neutral record.

In 2006, we went 1-5 on the R/N, despite playing only 2 games against teams that finished better than 7-6 (both losses). Our one road win against a team with a winning record (7-6), but that is the only road win against a winning team in Dorrell's tenure. Merely by beating only the road teams who finished 7-6 or worse, we would have gone 4-2 on the road and finished with a 10-3 record, and Dorrell's job approval rating would be in pretty decent shape. That being said, we weren't close to doing that, as the 3 road losses to middling teams were all by 10 points or more.

In 2005, Dorrell posted his only winning road/neutral record (4-2). Not surprisingly, it was also his top-25 finish. The signature "road" win was the Sun Bowl victory over 7-5 Northwestern. The 3 other road victories included the two amazing comebacks against non-bowl teams WSU and Stanford, and the losses were by a combined 118-33. Ouch!

In 2004, Dorrell got his only signature road win in 4 years--a nice win at Autzen Stadium, as tough a place to play as there is and a win that made the Bruins "bowl eligible" for that embarrassing loss to Wyoming. Lost in the hysteria surrounding our eligibility for a trip to Vegas was that Oregon finished a mediocre 5-6.

In 2003, we were an unforgiveable 1-6 on the road, with the only win coming against pathetic 2-10 Arizona by 3 points and two losses against losing teams.

Further breakdown of 9-16:

Road record

1. against teams with .750 winning pct or better (e.g. teams 9-3 or better): 0-8
   
2. against other winning teams: 2-4
   
3. against losing teams that are within 2 games of .500 (5-7 or better): 3-2
   
4. against losing teams who are 4-7 or 3-8: 2-2
   
5. against teams worse than 3-8: 2-0 (both teams finished in LAST place in the Pac-10 and eked out only 3 wins combined, but our combined margin of victory was 9 points).

*2-12 against teams with winning records (and the "2" came against 7-5 and 7-6 teams)
*0-9 r/n record against teams with more than 7 wins
*No R/N wins against teams who were ranked at the end of the season
*2 road losses to teams that finished in 9th place or worse in the Pac-10.
*A staggering 4 road losses to teams that finished in 8th place or worse in their conference
*A pathetic 1 R/N win against a team that finished in better than a tie for 5th place in its conference
*A mere 4-4 road record against teams that finished 8th or worse in their conference (1-4 if you remove the teams that finished in 10th (last) place, but at least he didn't lose to any 10th place teams!).
*Only 1 Road win against a winning team (7-6 ASU in 2006)

If you remove the "good" teams we played on the road (.750 or better), Dorrell is still just 9-8 R/N against the rest (that's barely .500 against the teams a good team would beat almost every time). If Dorrell's Bruins had won all 16 road games against teams with 7-5 or worse record, his season records would have been 8-5, 7-5, 11-1 and 10-3, and we wouldn't be having these discussions. If he'd merely not lost on the road to teams who finished 8th or worse in conference, his record would be 8-5, 6-6, 11-1 and 8-5, and this conversation would probably still be happening, but it would be much more hopeful.

Of course, that those wins didn't happen cannot be ignored. I believe that Dorrell's failures on the road are indicative of his mediocrity as a head coach. Moreover, this type of mediocrity is not something that I suspect will be cured with what people are referring to as an easier road schedule in 2007. We have to play Utah, WSU, OSU, USC, Stanford and Arizona on the road. I would suspect that 3 of those teams will finish with a winning record and two others (Arizona and OSU) to probably be no worse than 5-7, and only Stanford to be worse than that. Given Dorrell's past record on the road, I can't bring myself to "predict" that Dorrell will do well enough to meet my expectation of a Pac-10 championship at once every 5 years.

Please feel free to add thoughts or to help strengthen this argument by (1) breaking down the 20-5 home record by quality of opponent, and (2) proving or disproving my hypothesis that good teams do well on the road, and even beat some good teams outside the friendly confines of the home stadium.