Michael Ventre

Welcome to the 2008 UCLA production of “Faust,” starring Dan Guerrero as the title character and Rick Neuheisel as Mephistopheles, a.k.a. the Devil. In an audacious reworking of the story, not only does the Devil come to take Faust’s soul, but the NCAA also comes to take away scholarships.

The announcement that after a nationwide coaching search that included being turned down by the coach at Temple, UCLA had decided to put its football program in the slippery mitts of Neuheisel, could not have more Faustian overtones if Neuheisel showed up at the press conference with blue and gold horns. It’s that kind of deal.

Guerrero, the Bruins’ athletic director, looked in the mirror and saw a desperate man. He hired Karl Dorrell, then fired him after five mediocre seasons. He was being blamed for that misstep, and was being preemptively ripped each time a new candidate for the job surfaced. UCLA fans and alumni were pressuring him to do something bold to liven up a flatlined program.

So he succumbed. He hired Neuheisel, whose name has become synonymous in college football with chicanery. Neuheisel isn’t evil, merely cunning. He isn’t dirty, merely sneaky. He isn’t a felony waiting to happen, but he is a full rap sheet of misdemeanors.

He is, in short, a lawyer.

Now simply because he’s a lawyer doesn’t mean he is prone to deviousness, although in that profession it is often considered an asset. It means that Neuheisel has been trained to find ways around the law.

He left Colorado in 1999 and the school was slapped with two years of probation by the NCAA for a series of secondary violations — most of which involved skirting the rules regarding contact with recruits — as well as lack of institutional control. Said Neuheisel about that time: “Certainly I’ve made mistakes.”

He coached at Washington, where he got into trouble and was eventually fired because of his involvement in a basketball-betting pool. It seems being in the pool was less of a problem than his initial denials about being in the pool, which angered Washington officials. Eventually, Neuheisel does what a lawyer does best — he sued — and won a $4.5 million wrongful-termination judgment.

If that were only it, then Neuheisel should be welcomed into Westwood on the shoulders of a cheering throng.

Video   A new house for Neuheisel Dec. 31: Rick Neuheisel is looking forward to being new head coach at UCLA.

But his pattern of behavior is troubling. After jumping to Washington, a move that left the Colorado community in a tizzy, he tried to convince some of his Colorado players to jump with him. After an uproar, Washington eventually had to notify the Pac-10 it would not accept any of his Colorado transfers.

In 2002, he was reprimanded by the Pac-10 for comments he made criticizing the recruiting tactics of Oregon and UCLA; even though he probably had a point, he handled it poorly. In 2003, he was censured by the American Football Coaches Association for showing a lack of remorse in what he did at Colorado. Also in 2003, he released a statement saying he never discussed a head coaching job with the San Francisco 49ers, then a day later admitted that he did.

Today he is UCLA’s head football coach, and he is 46 years old, so he will undoubtedly say that all of those mistakes happened because he was a wunderkind, that he was 34 when he got the job at Colorado and his hubris got the best of him. Now, I’m sure he’ll say, he’s wiser, less audacious, less pugnacious.