OLD DAYS WELCOMED ANEW.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

The dais was being wheeled away and the chairs folded and stacked after the news conference, but the former UCLA football teammates who came to witness Karl Dorrell's introduction as head coach Thursday weren't leaving.

Outside the room, amid the trophies and memorabilia in the UCLA sports hall of fame, the players hung around to greet friends and talk excitedly about what they'd heard. About a dozen ex-players were beaming, including David Norrie, Ken Norton, Matt Stevens and James Washington, veterans of head coach Terry Donahue's best teams.

``It's like a reunion,'' one-time assistant coach and athletic administrator Jerry Long said brightly after he and Norrie hugged. ``Having you guys here, it's like having the old days back.''

The enthusiasm of ex-players, alumni and other fans for Dorrell's hiring to replace Bob Toledo didn't quite square with reality.

--The old days might not have been as good as the faithful remember, marked as much by the frustration of the Bruins' failure to crack the national elite as they were by the celebrations of a run of Rose Bowl victories and wins over USC during the 1982-86 stretch when Dorrell was a wide receiver.

--The Toledo days might not have been as bad as the partisans think, including as they did a Bruins-record 20-game winning streak and a tantalizing run at a national championship in 1998 before all of the recent late-season folds and off-field problems.

--The Dorrell era is no sure winner, seeing as how we won't begin to find out if he can coach until the Bruins open the 2003 season Sept. 6 at Colorado.

But the enthusiasm of old Bruins is worth noting because it says a lot about what the UCLA football program has been and what it hopes to be.

The love-in at the J.D. Morgan Center on Thursday was something you'd expect to see at USC's Heritage Hall - though the comparison ends with the numbers of national-title trophies and Heisman Trophies in the display cases.

UCLA athletes never have enjoyed the sense of heritage their USC rivals are reminded about every time they read the name on their campus headquarters. That void has been particularly noticeable to Donahue-era football players during the Toledo years. And they hope Dorrell's return marks an embrace of Bruins tradition, whatever that might be, exactly.

``I'm just hoping they get some of that old Bruins spirit back here,'' Jim Bush, the former UCLA track and field coach and football conditioning coach, said at Spaulding Field as the team wrapped up a practice session for the Las Vegas Bowl game Christmas Day against New Mexico. ``The attitude of never giving up, of being the best you can be.

``Karl understands UCLA. It's not a private school. There's just a difference. A private school will have more of a tight-knit feel. A big state school doesn't tend to have that. I think Karl's presence can improve that.''

Following Donahue, who'd been a UCLA player and assistant coach, Toledo might have been too insecure about his weak ties to the university to welcome former players. Toledo's own success and disdain of the ``Gutty Little Bruin'' image might have led him to shut out the past. Toledo's coaching rivalry with popular ex-Bruins quarterback Rick Neuheisel didn't help.

``It's no fault of Bob Toledo's. He did a good job as coach. He led them to within a play or two of the national title,'' said Norrie, the quarterback who threw passes to Dorrell in 1985. ``That being said, there are a lot of ex-players who didn't feel the connection we thought we should have. Now that we have a coach (Dorrell) who we were in the huddle with, there's a number of players at this press conference who feel they're coming back home.

``We're not involved as players or coaches,'' Norrie said - and no, he said, they won't be crowding the sideline or Dorrell's style. ``But we care. You're either behind UCLA football or you're not. To have the presence of the players from the past can only reinforce that.''

Dorrell, 39 and with no head-coaching experience, doesn't get this job if he doesn't bleed blue and gold. The fact he's black might have helped, but mostly because he fits so comfortably in UCLA history, the university taking pride in having been a springboard for Jackie Robinson, Rafer Johnson and Arthur Ashe.

First-year athletic director Dan Guerrero - himself a former UCLA baseball player - said the Bruins connection was one thing Mike Riley, the other leading candidate, never could offer.

``We do have a rich heritage,'' Guerrero said, ``(but) we needed somebody to come in and kind of draw that out.''

It looks as if Dorrell is going to have a happy honeymoon - and a long one, at least 260 days, until he must actually coach a game.

The enthusiasm was infectious when Washington, the former Bruins and Dallas Cowboys safety, said: ``At any college, it's all about family.'' And when Dorrell spoke emotionally of knowing ``what it's like to spill blood for the Bruins.'' And when the former players and supporters ringing the news-conference room cheered his introduction.

Like having the old days back.

Of course, this is a football program that, for all of its Pacific-10 Conference championships, hasn't finished higher than No. 4 in the polls since winning its last national title in 1954 or a Heisman Trophy since Gary Beban's in '67, and in recent years has been as much as ever a Trojans punching bag.

What the Bruins have to do is not just reconnect with their past but improve on it.

Until they do that, heritage is just a hall across town.