Donahue May Regret Helping Cooper Get Arizona State Job

The new football coach at Arizona State is telling anyone who cares to ask that the person most instrumental in getting him the job in Tempe was UCLA Coach Terry Donahue.

“The first thing he did for me was turn the job down,” John Cooper said. “He backed out, and when he did, he gave me a very strong recommendation.

“It’s no secret that he was their No. 1 choice, and I think his recommendation weighed heavily with the people making the decisions.”

Now, in the week that Donahue is preparing his UCLA team to play Cooper’s Arizona State team on Saturday, he’s not nearly so magnanimous.

“I wish he would go back to Tulsa,” Donahue said. “Anything I might have said nice about him, I take back.”

Cooper’s ASU team is off to a 2-1 start. After losing a close game at Michigan State, the Sun Devils have shut out Pacific, 27-0, and USC, 24-0.

New coaches certainly feel welcome in a community when they get off to a start like that. But Cooper was making a place for himself in the ASU community long before the first game was played.

For starters, a lot of the Sun Devil fans and boosters were not real sorry to see Darryl Rogers make his now famous quick exit to the Detroit Lions last spring.

And then Cooper came in and let the people see that he’s a fired-up, go-get-’em kind of guy. He’s not as intense as the legendary Frank Kush, but, then, he’s not as laid-back as the “wimpy” Rogers, as one Arizona columnist called him.

Before the season began, former coach Dan Devine, now the executive director of the Sun Angels booster group, said: “I’ve never seen a guy come in and do so many things right. He has really sold himself.”

Reporters who visited the Sun Devils’ infamous training facility, Camp Tontozona, concluded that Cooper was tough enough, that he had a good sense of humor, that he was honest and sincere, that he was unpretentious.

Nobody in Arizona was hoping he’d go back to Tulsa just yet.

The only reservation expressed when Cooper was named was that he was not a big-time, big-name coach. Although Cooper had a 57-31 record at Tulsa and had won five straight Missouri Valley Conference titles, ASU fans didn’t consider that big-time.

And Cooper, 48, had not had a head coaching job before he went to Tulsa in 1977. After playing at Iowa State, he joined that staff and coached there until Tommy Prothro hired him as an assistant at Oregon State. He went with Prothro to UCLA, where Donahue was a player, in 1966 and the next year Pepper Rodgers hired Cooper at Kansas. Donahue, too, was on Rodgers’ staff that year.

So the Donahue-Cooper ties go way back. But Donahue says that won’t be of any help when they meet across the field Saturday. “I know him personally, but I don’t know him as a coach very well,” Donahue said. “You get to know a coach by coaching against him.

“I don’t know much about his coaching style other than that I know he’s a strong disciplinarian, he’s tough, and his teams reflect him.”

Donahue didn’t want to say much about his recommendation of Cooper because, he said, that was a private conversation. But Cooper admitted without hesitation that he had talked with Donahue while Donahue was considering ASU and that he had told Donahue that if he didn’t want the job, any help would be appreciated.

Told that now Donahue wants him to go back to Tulsa, Cooper said: “I hope he still feels that way after the game.”

Bruin Notes Matt Stevens, UCLA quarterback who was expected to be out for at least three weeks after hurting ligaments in his left knee last Saturday, was walking with no apparent limp Tuesday and tried to convince the coaches that he was ready to resume practice. “I couldn’t believe it when they started talking about arthroscopic surgery Sunday afternoon,” Stevens said. “I knew it couldn’t be that bad. I really shocked Coach Donahue when I told him I felt like I could practice yesterday.” . . . UCLA has never lost to Arizona State. The schools met for the first time in 1976, in the opener of Terry Donahue’s first season as head coach. He has a record of 5-0-1 against ASU. . . . Arizona State has not given up a touchdown in 11 quarters. . . . The Sun Devils played USC without all-conference tailback Darryl Clack, who also is not expected to start against UCLA.