Sherrard Has a Good and Bad Day : Bruin Wide Receiver Breaks a Record, Then His Clavicle

UCLA football player Mike Sherrard personifies one problem facing the other school in town, USC, during the balance of the 20th Century and doubtless beyond.

Sherrard, a wide receiver, came to the Bruins as a walk-on who wasn’t offered a scholarship when he finished high school in Chico.

This made him responsible for his own college expenses, which are minimal at UCLA, a state school, by comparison with USC, a private institution where tuition costs are high.

No college recruiter anywhere agreed with Sherrard five years ago when he told himself: “I’ve got a chance to play big-time football.”

That’s the kind of walk-on the Bruins get.

And Saturday, they also got a dividend when Sherrard caught six passes for 89 yards to become the school’s all-time career yardage champion with 1,921.

On the afternoon he set the record, Sherrard also went down with an injury that may bench him until New Year’s Day--a broken clavicle.

This raised one immediate question with his family and friends: Will the injury rob Sherrard of the opportunity to become a high draft choice this spring in the National Football League?

Two NFL scouts at the Rose Bowl, where UCLA was clobbering Arizona State, 40-17, agreed he was hurt in a fluke accident that will be disregarded by the pros.

“The injury won’t affect him (in the draft) at all,” said Les Miller, director of player personnel for the Kansas City Chiefs. “He will be evaluated just the way he would have been before he was hurt.”

John Trump, who scouts the West Coast for the Detroit Lions, said: “A clavicle break isn’t the kind of injury (the NFL) worries about.”

Both visitors expect to see Sherrard’s name among the first 28 drafted by the pros.

The receiver Miller thinks of when he looks at Sherrard is Hall of Famer Paul Warfield.

“I don’t mean to suggest he’s another Warfield,” Miller said, “but he’s the same smooth, fluid type. He’s entirely different from a jitterbug like Dokie Williams but he’s just about as effective. The thing that impresses me is that Sherrard makes himself faster every year.”

Sherrard confirmed after the game that he has indeed improved his speed annually.

“I work with UCLA sprint coach John Smith,” he said. “I do all the drills and lift the same weights as a sprinter. In the last year or so I’ve brought my (40-yard) time down from 4.5 to 4.36.”

He looked all that fast on the 36-yard touchdown play that put Arizona State away in the Bruins’ 20-point second quarter.

And he was speeding again with another David Norrie pass a few minutes later when was injured.

“A guy slung me down and landed on my shoulder,” Sherrard said. “It wasn’t a dirty play. The extra weight did it.”

With his senior year in a shambles, Sherrard took it philosophically.

“It only hurts when I move,” he said.

A tall, spindly type, Sherrard stands 6-2 and, he said, he has weighed 186 for the last two years.

Friendly, articulate, a good student, he will graduate soon.

“We have the quarter system (at UCLA), and I’ll be finished with school after the second quarter this year,” he said.

A history major, he is the son of a political science professor at Cal State Chico.

For the last three years, Sherrard has been on scholarship at UCLA, where he is the living proof that Coach Terry Donahue does throw the football. Both of a receiver’s most prized school records, receptions and yards, now belong to Sherrard, who has caught 123 Bruin passes.

An Arizona reporter asked him if this makes him the top receiver of all time at a university that has recently produced Cormac Carney, Jojo Townsell, Dokie Williams and others.

“I’ve caught more passes than anyone else ever has at UCLA,” he said. “But you don’t determine a team’s best receiver by the number of passes caught.”

Asked why he enrolled at UCLA with the whole world to choose from as a walk-on, Sherrard said.

“I’m from the Bay Area, but I’ve always liked the atmosphere and climate of Los Angeles. I didn’t come here to play football. I came here to live in Los Angeles. I figured I’d have to improve to play football anywhere.”