AFTER FIRST YEAR AT UCLA, IT'S CLEAR ... DAN HAS A PLAN.

Byline: Rich Hammond Staff Writer

The face of UCLA athletics has changed. It's now rounded, with a receding hairline and a warm smile. But make no mistake: The man behind this soft face means business.

UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero is wrapping up a remarkably eventful first year on the job, one that saw him fire the two highest-profile coaches on campus and stamp himself as a leader who is determined to shape the Bruins into principled winners.

``It's a good time right now to be a Bruin,'' Guerrero said last week, but that remains to be seen, and largely will be determined by the success of football coach Karl Dorrell and basketball coach Ben Howland, the men to whom Guerrero has staked his near future.

Guerrero's first year will long be remembered for the swift-but-difficult decision to fire football coach Bob Toledo and the nightmarish soap opera that was the basketball season and the eventual, anticlimactic dismissal of coach Steve Lavin.

To outsiders, Guerrero could been seen as a renegade, a man who came in with a new vision and was determined to make changes simply to prove he was in charge, motivated by a desire to get ``his guys'' in the two biggest coaching seats.

``I'm not a person who keeps score, from that standpoint,'' Guerrero said. ``I was hired to do a job, and that job is to make this the best program it can be. As you assess and evaluate and observe, sometimes it requires you to be very active and very proactive. Sometimes change is good and the byproduct of change can be good.

``I regret that we couldn't create a situation where those coaches could have remained and been successful. The decisions that were made were, from a business standpoint, actually very easy to make.

``Those two programs are the economic drivers for our entire program. The success that we achieve across the board is a direct byproduct in our ability to fund our program at the levels that we do, and those two programs are the main cogs of that equation.''

Guerrero took charge of an athletic department that, by most accounts, was left in fairly good shape by his predecessor, Peter Dalis, with two notable exceptions.

Dalis, as something of a lame-duck AD, had ducked the issues of Lavin and Toledo, both of whom had been squarely on the hot seat in 2001-02. But Guerrero wasted no time, and that decisiveness earned him immediate goodwill among many UCLA followers.

``I think he did extremely well,'' UCLA associate athletic director Betsy Stephenson said. ``Both of those situations were very difficult, but he handled both situations with caring and compassion, but also clarity.''

Not that the decisions were easy. The basketball team's 10-19 record made Lavin's firing a formality, but the football team went 7-5 under Toledo.

Guerrero had to weigh Toledo's 49-32 record against the idea that the team and fans had lost faith in the coach, as well as recent off-field problems (handicapped-parking scandal, several player arrests) that Guerrero came into the job saying he would not tolerate.

Toledo was fired Dec. 9, two days after the Bruins lost to Washington State.

``My most difficult decision of the year was the Bob Toledo decision,'' Guerrero said. ``Even though from a business standpoint it was clearly the right decision to make, the human element to it is very real when you sit in this position.

``If you talk to anyone, they will tell you that Bob Toledo is a good guy and he's a very good family man. In the very short period of time that we worked together, we developed a relationship and my family developed a relationship with his family, so to have to make that decision was extremely tough. I talked to my wife and daughter and told them I was going to do that, and I spent the rest of the night consoling them.

``Bob actually did a very good job in this past year, corralling the potential for transgressions, the kind of transgressions that had hurt the program in the past, but clearly there was an erosion of confidence that had taken place in that program.''

Then came basketball, the Bruins' spotlight sport, the one with 11 national championships and an unparalleled history. If UCLA wins regularly in just one sport, it must be men's basketball, and that made last season a nightmare for all involved.

UCLA lost nine consecutive games during one stretch, including two to USC, and, as the season wound down, Lavin began making weekly farewell speeches and waving to visiting fans, at one point offering the media a list of his possible successors.

Guerrero took some heat for simply standing by and watching the circus, though he remains steadfast that not firing Lavin in midseason was the right thing to do.

``While it was important in my mind that Steve have the ability to finish what he started,'' Guerrero said, ``it was extremely important that we worked with our student-athletes to keep them focused and get them to practice and play hard, despite whatever external influences or forces were pulling at them.

``In an environment where everyone was chipping away at the program and chipping away at Steve, what we did internally is what we always do, and that was to support and try to edify and find solutions to make the situation better. Steve was very receptive to that, but it was very difficult throughout the year.''

Those firings, and the ensuing hirings of Dorrell and Howland, allowed Guerrero to see the full magnitude of leading UCLA. He had smaller tastes of it, as athletic director at UC Irvine and Cal State Dominguez Hills, but suddenly, everyone in a UCLA hat or T-shirt had an opinion, and many of them let Guerrero know.

``I was somewhat surprised by the passion that's been articulated by the people who love UCLA and their willingness to express that, both positively and negatively,'' Guerrero said. ``Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised by that, but as I compare it with UC Irvine, it's night and day, no question about it.

``There were times during certain parts of the year when I was getting 100 calls or letters or e-mails per day. It's interesting, because in any situation you get positive input and negative input, and you have to stay the course, stay true to your convictions and do what you think is right.''

Along the way, Guerrero has developed a reputation, one from which he doesn't shy away. He will stand behind his beliefs, even if they are unpopular, because if Guerrero is in charge of something as big as the UCLA athletic department, a job with intense scrutiny, he wants to make sure he succeeds or fails based on his own ideals.

Guerrero is doing things his way, not the way Dalis did them or the way the people on talk radio or the Internet want him to do them. If Dorrell, with no head-coaching experience, or Howland fail, it will be on Guerrero's head, but that's fine with him.

``Certainly we want to win, but we want to win the right way,'' Guerrero said. ``That's a fundamental absolute for our program. When you have to make a decision on a high-profile coach, whether you pay that coach two dollars or two million dollars, every decision you make is a leap of faith.

``But given that, when you're going to battle with someone, and the stakes are high, you want to go to battle with someone who shares your core convictions, in this case men of character, men who have successful backgrounds, men who have scratched and clawed to the top, men who believe in the importance of discipline and fundamentals. I see all of those characteristics in both of those guys I hired.''

There is much work ahead. Guerrero takes pride in the three national championships (men's soccer, women's gymnastics, women's water polo) under his watch but looks forward to building more winning programs, and building more facilities.

The Acosta Center, which will serve as a home for the football team and several Olympic sports, is being renovated and expanded, and Guerrero said he is considering different plans to make cosmetic ``enhancements'' to Pauley Pavilion.

UCLA's contract with the Rose Bowl expires after the upcoming football season, and though Guerrero said the school hopes to extend the agreement, he also would not rule out a move to a potential NFL stadium in Carson.

Year 2 of the Dan Guerrero era, therefore, figures to be an important one in establishing the future of UCLA athletics, as the decisions he made in the first 12 months play out, for better or worse.

``It's been a great year to take off from,'' Guerrero said. ``I hoped that in my first year we could establish a tone, or a climate, that could lead to long-term success, and to articulate a vision that's based on everyone pulling the rope in the same direction and relying on each other's strengths, and I think we've accomplished that.''

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(1 -- 4 -- color) no caption (UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero