BRUINS ARE TAKING QUITE A RISK BY MAKING SUCH A 'SLICK' MOVE.

Byline: PAUL OBERJUERGE

Running a clean college football program can be so tedious. UCLA fans could tell you all about it. Rampant morality, unchecked high-mindedness, runaway rules-compliance ... what a bore.

It can lead to outrages such as a 6-7 season which, of course, is more than alumni and fans should be forced to accept.

How to escape that suffocating yoke of righteousness?

Close your eyes, hold your nose and hire someone like Rick Neuheisel.

That's what UCLA chancellor Gene Block and athletic director Dan Guerrero did Saturday after spending most of four weeks talking themselves around to the idea that this particular NCAA scofflaw turned into Mr. Clean during five seasons away from college football.

In the process, Block and Guerrero are placing their reputations in the hands of a man whose career shouts out "ethically challenged."

Gene and Dan, a little advice: Don't turn your back on "Slick Rick." Not if you would prefer that NCAA enforcement guys stay off your campus.

Guerrero maintained Saturday that UCLA performed "due diligence" on Neuheisel. And now we understand why it took 26 days for the Bruins to replace Karl Dorrell. So much baggage to examine!

"Slick Rick" apparently never has met an NCAA rule he hasn't broken, skirted, ignored or professed ignorance of. Check his four-year terms at Colorado (1995-98) and Washington (1999-2002), where he was in some degree of trouble almost from Day 1.

Colorado was put on probation for two years after Neuheisel jumped to Washington, with the NCAA citing 51rules violations during his tenure. And don't forget that ineligible sixth-year senior; the episode ended with Colorado forfeiting all five of its 1997 victories. A "bookkeeping error," Neuheisel said.

Then came Washington, where TheSlickster flouted NCAA recruiting rules even before coaching his first game. (Washington assistants visited potential recruits on days outside NCAA guidelines, for starters.) And where he gambled thousands of dollars in NCAA basketball pools before he was dismissed.

Not that UCLA wants that Rick. Or thinks it hired that Rick.

He's a new man, see? He has wandered in the wilderness and "taken ownership," he said repeatedly Saturday, of his various and sundry venial sins and little white lies.

How can the Bruins be sure?

Dan Guerrero suggested Neuheisel passed the acid test. "I looked Rick in the eye and he looked me in the eye," Guerrero said.

Well, then. No worries. Guerrero's eyeball test came back negative for sleaziness.

Wonder if Guerrero's retinal scan also determined if The Slickster has forsaken his litigious ways. He got a $4.5 million settlement from Washington and the NCAA when the Huskies botched his firing.

Yep, just what every school needs; a coach who lawyers up when times get tough and he already has ticked off the NCAA.

Not to be a total killjoy over a hire the fan-base rank-and-file seem to love, but there are other, football-related reasons why Neuheisel is a shaky choice.

He has taken over two elite programs and left them significantly diminished.

Colorado was 58-11-4 during the sixseasons before his accession. It is 57-55 since he left.

Washington was 65-29-1 the eightseasons before he took over. It is 18-41 since he was fired.

Then there is the "fast start, shaky finish" aspect of his career. In his first two seasons at Colorado and Washington, his teams were a composite 38-10. In his third and fourth seasons at each school, his teams were 28-20.

And his recent work? Offensive coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens, one of the most inept offensive teams in the NFL.

Perhaps we're just being hard on Slickman. He's a charming guy, everyone says, a former Bruins quarterback, a surfer and guitar-playing fun guy.

Maybe he will be just fine. Perhaps he really has changed his ways.

He promises he has. All those prior incidents, heck, he was just a kid in his 30s back then.

Of course, UCLA could have hired someone without a checkered history, someone like DeWayne Walker, but that would be too much like perpetuating the Era of Compliance that was, oh, so dreary.

The Bruins choose to walk on the wild side. Good luck with that.

Maybe it will work out wonderfully for a year or two. But maybe it will end with Block and Guerrero having a whole lot of 'splainin' to do.

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Photo:

New UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel, arm raised, was an assistant to former coach Terry Donahue, middle, from 1986-93.

J.D. Cuban/ALLSPORT