SWEET DREAMS

On a desk in the office of a guy nobody would confuse with Willy Wonka, there sits a glass candy jar.

On this early afternoon, it is one-third filled with M&M;’s.

Karl Dorrell looks down at it and grins.

“I better talk to my wife,” he says.

What he will tell her speaks cubic volumes about the direction of his UCLA football program.

He will ask her to buy more M&M;’s.

Last year, Kim Dorrell visited the local Costco and purchased about two bags a month for the office.

This year, with players constantly visiting Dorrell, digging their hands into the jar while mining the mind of their coach, she buys six bags a week.

“It’s been a rough couple of years,” running back Maurice Drew said. “But this year, Coach seems more relaxed. This year, he has expression.”

The stare of a stranger, they say, has slowly become the smile of a friend.

The face of a loner, they claim, has slowly taken on the look of a leader.

“He jumps up and down with us now,” Drew said. “He’s right in there with us now.”

An office that was once as forbidding as Dorrell’s perfectly pressed sweat pants -- how does he do that? -- is now one big living room.

His daughter’s drawings are on the door, snacks are on the counter, and a neatly folded blanket and pillow are on a leather couch in the corner.

Where kids used to sit on the edge of their seats, they now feel comfortable enough to sprawl on their backs.

While Dorrell sometimes sleeps here, so do his players.

“Sometimes they’ll come in for some candy and grab a quick nap,” Dorrell says, shrugging. “That’s fine with me.”

At this point, many UCLA critics will accuse this column of, well, sugarcoating things.

They want Dorrell canned. They don’t think he can coach at this level. They accuse him of being too young, too stiff, and, worst of all, not Pete Carroll.

They are upset that, in two years, he has suffered consecutive lousy and ill-mannered bowl losses, consecutive USC losses, all amid a Rose Bowl atmosphere that can best be described as wilted.

In many ways, they are right, especially the Pete Carroll part.

But in one way, they are wrong.

He’s not too young, because a kid doesn’t always admit his mistakes and learn from them.

A kid wouldn’t have turned down a contract extension after his first year because he didn’t think he was doing the job.

A kid wouldn’t have thrown some of the most promising Bruins off the team because he didn’t think they were representing the university.

And a kid wouldn’t have stood in front of a scowling Bruin Nation for the last two years and taken every well-deserved shot with good nature and firm jaw and a belief that it would one day work.

Maybe it won’t. Maybe Dorrell’s team, 1-0 for the first time in his three years here and facing a friendly schedule, will disappear sometime during the Oklahoma game and never been seen again.

But, at age 41, having set his program up for success on the field and peace in the streets, Dorrell is showing he can do what many young coaches can’t, or won’t.

He can grow.

“In my mind, a football coach has to be able to look his players in the eye and say, ‘You’re special’ and make them believe it,’ ” says Dan Guerrero, Bruin athletic director. “Karl has grown into that.”

He has grown into lots of things, mainly his first real chance at a decent season.

He has finally accumulated the quick, Denver Bronco-style blockers for Drew, his jewel of a running back.

He has finally made it work that Marcedes Lewis can be the Bruins’ top receiver at tight end.

He has convinced his veteran quarterback, Drew Olson, that it is more important to be smart than spectacular.

He has recruited such that he was able to play nine true freshmen against San Diego State, nearly as many as he played all of last season.

And when mission-toughened quarterback Ben Olson gets healthy, he might have the best 22-year-old freshman in the country.

Then there’s the schedule, featuring only three more games outside Los Angeles, and their toughest early game is against a Sooner team that suddenly looks vulnerable.

All of this could be setting Karl Dorrell up for a Toledo-sized fall.

Or will it be a Donahue-style survival?

I’ll admit it. I’m rooting for the guy.

For two seasons Dorrell has been stuck between USC and a hard place, compared with the hottest program in college football while running one of the quietest, his fans frustrated and his players transferring and the seats emptying.

And yet, he has kept his cool, taught his system, his stars have listened, his troublemakers have either skipped town or been shut up, this is finally his team, 1-0 with Rice next, and who knows?

“I’ve invest a lot in these players, and they’ve invested a lot in me,” Dorrell says. “And I think we’re on the same page now.”

It is a page that Guerrero could have written himself.

When he became UCLA’s athletic director, he preached accountability and credibility, and Dorrell is instilling both.

“I do believe we are on the right track,” Guerrero says. “And I don’t believe we are going to stumble.”

In Dorrell’s head coaching debut in Colorado, he looked completely lost. And he was.

“I had to find the pulse of this team, what was their heartbeat, where was their heartbeat?” he says.

Who would have thought that, three years later, he could ever be this heartbeat? But maybe he is.

“He’s with us now, in everything, and it doesn’t feel forced, it feels natural,” Drew said.

As natural as the sound of the candy currently being poured in the jar by Dorrell.

It contains plain M&M;’s, but Dorrell is adding a different kind.

“I know these guys now,” he says. “And they really like peanut.”