Going Home Won’t Be Homecoming for Bruin : Taylor Knows What Is Awaiting UCLA When Team Plays Tennessee at Knoxville

Tommy Taylor leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head in a move that was supposed to make him look casual, but with those massive arms framing his face and drawing attention to the mischievous little smile, no one believed his opening line.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

How about Tennessee?

Feigning surprise, Taylor said: “Oh, is this Tennessee week?”

Yes, UCLA will play football at Tennessee on Saturday, and it is downright impossible that Taylor, a senior inside linebacker and a Bruin captain, would have to check a schedule to know that.

For starters, he was wearing athletic shorts with “Tennessee” imprinted in the bright orange of the Volunteers. “I bought these at home this summer,” he said, grinning now more openly.

Taylor has been looking forward to this week since the spring of 1981, when UCLA coaches delivered a letter of intent to him in Chattanooga, Tenn., and he signed it. He has been leaning on all of his Bruin teammates for tickets since then, too, trading any for other road games they wanted.

“I keep it on a computer disc, so I know whose tickets I have and I can remind them of when they traded or when they promised me,” Taylor said. “I have at least 30 so far.”

Those tickets are for the relatives and former coaches and high school teachers who will be cheering for him. He fully expects most of the sellout crowd of 92,149 at Neyland Stadium to be booing him. In fact, he’s counting on it.

Taylor’s expressive face really lights up when he talks about the crowd at Tennessee. “Those people take their football seriously ,” he said. “The other players ask me what it’s going to be like there, and I tell them, ‘Get ready for a knock-down brawl-out battle.’ On the field, it will be a war.

“And the fans there prepare for a game. They’re getting ready now. The night before, at the Hyatt Regency (where the UCLA team will be staying) the Tennessee fans will have a band and they’ll party all night long. It just all comes to a head at game time.

“The stadium is aluminum and it just resounds when they all get up and start stamping their feet. They’ll be throwing oranges and singing.” At that point, Taylor suspended his dialogue and burst into song: “Rocky Top you will always be home, sweet home, to me . . . “

He knows the words to the Tennessee song?

“Oh, sure,” Taylor said. “I was an avid Tennessee fan. I watched ‘The Johnny Majors Show’ every Saturday morning. I didn’t actually get to Knoxville for a game until I was a junior in high school, and that was really a thrill.”

It seemed to be with a degree of pride that Taylor said, “Tennessee has the rowdiest fans you will ever meet. Everybody talks about Nebraska. I tell them, ‘Wait till you get to Tennessee.’ ”

So how in the world did Taylor ever leave his home, sweet home, old Rocky Top?

That’s what Tennessee Coach Johnny Majors would like to know. Asked about it, Majors said, “It wasn’t because of our lack of effort. We couldn’t have pursued him any harder. He made up his mind early to leave and go a far distance.

“In my eight or nine years here we haven’t lost many like him. We don’t have as many football players as California has, so when one like him gets away, that’s a big loss. We can’t afford to lose many like him.”

Taylor was a high school All-American and was rated the top player in the state during his senior year at Chattanooga High, where he was also the school’s MVP in wrestling and an A student. He was recruited by almost everyone, including Notre Dame, Ohio State and Alabama. He was being recruited as a running back. As Taylor put it, “It was the Herschel Walker era.” But he liked the idea of playing defense.

He also liked the idea of going away to school. “I had been in Tennessee all my life,” he said. “I wanted to go somewhere where I could grow and mature.”

He was thinking Notre Dame, but then the UCLA representatives stopped by to see him while they were recruiting Bill Mayo, a lineman who eventually went to Tennessee. Taylor made the trip to Los Angeles, then started thinking UCLA.

“The local newspapers kept writing that I was going to Notre Dame, but I really had not made up my mind,” Taylor said. “I think they were just trying to draw me out and keep the issue alive. There was a lot of pressure for me to go to Tennessee.

“When I said that I was going to UCLA, it was like I was excommunicated from the state. There was an award for the top player in the city and I was sure I would win that award. But after I said I was going away, they gave it to a guy who was going to UT Chattanooga. That hurt me.

“Now, when I’m home, it’s like I don’t even exist.”

That’s fine with him, he said. He would like to stay as low-profile as possible this week, although reporters are not going to allow it.