When the Dust Settles, UCLA Is on Top : Bruins Win Fiesta Bowl Shoot-Out Against Kosar and Hurricanes, 39-37

UCLA undid Miami, 39-37, Tuesday in a mad game of musical chairs, where the winner was not necessarily the better team but the one which happened to be sitting pretty when the music stopped.

It was a feast of Fiesta Bowl football, a day when defense took a siesta and where even unlikely names like Gaston Green and Steve Bono found their moment in the national marquee lights.

Somewhere, somebody will write that UCLA’s John Lee kicked a 22-yard field-goal with 51 seconds left to win it and leave it at that. And maybe that is just as well. How do you write Cliff Notes on “War and Peace?”

Or maybe you could put it this way: After almost 800 yards, 76 points, 43 first downs, nine touchdowns, eight extra points, four field goals and a safety, the game clock--exhausted--finally collapsed at 0:00, and UCLA had once again exercised exclusivity rights to New Year’s Day.

This was the Bruins’ third straight New Year’s Day victory--two Roses and one Fiesta. As of today’s scheduled sunrise, no other school in the country could say that. Is Ted Tollner listening?

Is the nation listening? Terry Donahue, UCLA’s Mr. January, has never lost on the first day of the year, has beaten USC three years running, and was 8-1 this season with his chosen quarterback, Bono.

Is the NFL listening? Bono, the same, beat Bernie Kosar, the Computer Who Wore Cleats, at his own cosmic best. On a cloudless, flawless day, Bono never threw an interception, never committed a turnover, and never blinked in the ruthless game of Russian Roulette with Kosar. When the chamber finally fired, it wasn’t Bono holding the gun.

Bono completed 18 of 27 passes for 243 yards and two imperative second-half touchdowns. Kosar completed 31 of 44 passes for 294 yards and two touchdowns with one interception.

“This was the best game of my life,” said Bono, and who could not allow him some absolutes? It was Bono--the name that never seemed to find the same breath with the Fluties and the Kosars and the Boscos--who looked into the teeth of infamy--down by one point, two minutes and 40 seconds left and 68 yards to the brightly colored UCLA end zone--and conquered it.

It was Bono, in fact, who nearly slayed that dragon too well. He took the Bruins too far, too fast. His sandlot pump-and-go pass to wide receiver Mike Sherrard took the Bruins to the Miami 10 with still more than a minute left. At the frenetic pace of the day, Kosar could score twice more with that much time and have room left to read the stock tables.

Lee’s field goal--his third of the day and (is Ripley’s listening?) 32nd of the year--was good for points, but lousy for timing. Kosar would get the ball back with 51 seconds. “I did not want that,” Donahue said. “That’s why we wanted a touchdown--not a field goal. With Kosar, two points would not hold up.”

In case you think you’re seeing things on the page that aren’t there, you’re not. Donahue was actually terrified that Kosar could go 60 or so yards in 50 seconds with only one timeout and win. That is what kind of game it was.

And Kosar very nearly did. In just two plays and 15 seconds, he took Miami to the Hurricane 48-yard line. And it is quite possibly we could be singing songs of Bernie here--not Bono--if not for a cold-shiver sort of hit put upon Kosar by nose guard Terry Tumey, so shaking that the importance of holding on to the ball escaped Kosar. UCLA’s Eric Smith plopped down upon it and all was well again in Bruinland.

But even in Bruinland, they must pity Bernie Kosar. Three times running he has painted Miami glorious masterpieces and three times running his defense has pelted them with eggs. Outpourings of genius, sweat and 122 points in his last three games have been answered with 128 points and three straight losses.

Still, Kosar blamed himself Tuesday. “We went out on our last possession with every intention of scoring a touchdown or getting into position for a field goal,” he said. ‘That’s the offense’s job and we didn’t get it done.”

What can Miami Coach Jimmy Johnson do? The defensive coordinator already quit. Bring him back and fire him again for emphasis? “You have to play defense to be a championship team,” Johnson said. “We did not do that. But we will.”

Across the way, Donahue wasn’t saying what waited in UCLA’s future, but you knew he had an idea. Every year he makes for himself this Catch-22. He wins so grandly on New Year’s Day that the kingmakers decide his team will rule the game the next season and then Donahue spends the next six months explaining why it is false prophecy. Anybody remember whom Sports Illustrated deemed No. 1 in August?

“Now everybody will expect the ’85 team to be great,” Donahue moans. “They won’t listen when I tell them it needs to be rebuilt. Ah, what the heck, why try to fight it?”

Why, indeed. Why not just let the mind luxuriate all spring in a game that satisfied.

This was a lead that changed hands six times, but is forever now in Donahue’s paws. This was a game that UCLA came back from deficits like 21-7, 24-22, and 37-36. This was a day in which UCLA’s drives were long and furious--do-or-die memos that demanded touchdowns or else be left floundering behind in Bernie’s wake.

And that is what Bono and UCLA did. Most of the Bruin scoring drives were not cheap--51, 77, 66, 33 and 63, the latter to win the game.

They were done with magical mixing. The running was handled by Gaston Green, an acutely shy freshman with bedazzling speed and Hollywood hips. Green finished with 144 yards, two touchdowns and the offensive MVP award, the acceptance speech of which would have made Michael Jackson look boisterous.

It was Green who started the pyrotechnics. Ready? Inhale. . . .

He scored on a six-yard sweep and UCLA led by seven. One minute later, Miami’s Darryl Oliver snuck through a hole and went 34 yards for a touchdown. Tie game. Six minutes later, Miami’s All-American receiver Eddie Brown fumbled a punt, picked it up and went 68 yards for a touchdown. Miami led by seven.

Seven minutes later, Kosar hit both his receiver, Brian Blades, and UCLA’s defender, Dennis Price, in the end zone. Both players held the ball. Tie goes to the offense. Touchdown. Miami led by 14.

Less than a minute later, Green went off tackle for a 72-yard touchdown. Miami led by seven. Seven minutes later, Bruin defensive tackle Mark Walen whaled on Kosar at the Miami one-yard line, pinning Miami in and helping set up a safety three plays later when Miami punter Rick Tuten muffed a low snap and had leather for an early lunch. Safety. Miami led by only five.

One minute later, Lee kicked a 51-yard field goal, a welcome sight to Donahue who had watched Lee go through an agonizing week of bad practices and suffered “several anxiety attacks,” he said. Miami led by only two. Forty-five seconds later, Lee kicked another and UCLA led by one at half.

Still with us? After a Miami field goal, Bono went nuts. He hit Mike Sherrard with a 10-yard corner touchdown pass, then, six minutes later, hit Mike Young in the far reaches of the end zone with a 33-yard touchdown bomb that Young recalled as being “wide open all day.” Concurred Bono, “They (Miami) were playing our outs (down-and-out patterns) too tight. And, what, I think we only threw two or three all day. We knew we could go deep.”

However they did it, they led by 12 at that point and, as Young said, felt quite uneasy. “I didn’t think it would hold up.”

Yes, it was Kommander Kosar’s turn. He drove the Hurricanes downfield for a 19-yard touchdown run by Melvin Bratton and then found Bratton again with 2:58 left on a three-yard touchdown pass in the flat.

But nobody in the Sun Devil Stadium crowd of 60,310 thought that Kosar had just had the last word.