Tollner Rolls Dice, Hits Seven

Listen! Do you like guys who hide under the bed when they hear a noise in the attic? Who get up and close the window when they hear screaming in the alley?

Or do you lean to guys who throw away a pair of treys on the chance they might catch aces? Who say, “Hit me!” when they’ve got 17 showing.

Like guys who go out with their boots on and their guns out? Guys who take the wood out on par-5s even if there’s water in the back?

Your guy this week is USC Coach Ted Tollner. Tollner walked tall down Main Street at high noon Saturday. He told UCLA, “Make my day!” and blew them right out of the Rose Bowl . . . for a few hours, until Arizona State blew them right back in.

Here was the situation: There were 3 1/2 minutes to play in the ballgame, UCLA leading, 13-10, and USC had the ball on the UCLA six-yard line, fourth down and two to go.

A guy with the gout could have kicked the tying field goal from there.

A tie would have blocked UCLA from the Rose Bowl as effectively as would a loss. A tie could have resulted in the familiar old headline, “UCLA Loses To USC, 13-13.”

It was a time for Coach Tollner to say, “I pass.” To say, “I’ll play these.” To take the sure thing. A tie could have made not only his day but his season.

He scorned the tie. He’d dance with his sister some other time. In the best traditions of Wyatt Earp or Billy the Kid, he went for his guns and came up shooting. UCLA bit the dust, 17-13.

The Good Lord never intended for UCLA to win this game. Neither did their coach.

It was not an easy game to lose. It required concentration, perseverance, and a resolute belief that the worst was bound to happen. So, it did.

Coach Tollner didn’t outcoach Terry Donahue, he outbet him. He bet on the Come. He went with the shooter. Donahue hung on the pass line and kept pulling back chips. The house beat him. The house always beats guys like that.

The obverse of Tollner’s play came in the second quarter. With the score tied, UCLA had the ball on the USC six, fourth and only inches to go. UCLA opted for a field goal.

They had the best field-goal kicker in the country--in fact, the best in (collegiate) history. But they sent a message to the enemy that they were going to play the cards they were dealt; they were not raising. They were going for the decision, not the KO.

The only trouble with this philosophy is, it seems to kiss off the gods. They really went to work on UCLA after that. When UCLA, with a fourth-and-two on the USC 16 minutes later, also kicked a field goal, those gods seemed to say, “OK, that’s it! You chicken-lickin’ guys have had it.”

UCLA was later to (1) fumble on the USC 12-yard line with third-and-six; (2) fumble on the USC one-yard line with second-and-goal; (3) rough the kicker when USC had to punt from its own 21 and, instead of getting the ball on its own 29, had to turn it over to USC at its 36. When the fates turn on you, they don’t fool.

USC had nothing to lose except, maybe, the coach’s job. But it must have occurred to them Fate was trying to tell them something, that it was whispering in their ears, “Go for it!”

To have packed it in down on the goal line, to have settled for the field goal and a tie, would have been rank ingratitude. When you’re dealt the cards, bet ‘em.

So, USC pushed all its chips on the table. That was the story of the game: USC bet ‘em; UCLA folded ‘em.

The second-guessers will be out in force on UCLA Coach Terry Donahue. But when you have the best field-goal kicker in NCAA history, the percentages dictate you use him. As another coach, John McKay, once said of a situation where he used and reused his O.J. Simpson 40 times a game, “When you have a cannon, you fire it.”

Coach Donahue may have backfired it.

Coach Tollner did not consider his option daring. “Our objective was not to keep UCLA out of the Rose Bowl, it was to beat UCLA.”

That’s easy for him to say. He never had--beat UCLA, that is. His alumni is not so sporting. The next-best thing to going to the Rose Bowl themselves is keeping UCLA from going. If Tollner took a poll of the Trojan Club before twice going for the six points inside UCLA’s 10-yard-line with only a little over a minute to play, the vote might have been very close. Or unanimous: Not to.

It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. The coach didn’t make it in the heat of battle. “Before the game, we made up our minds we would go for a victory.” And not a “moral victory.” In Tollner’s view, that would have been more an immoral victory.

USC was 4-5 and shopping around for coaches before the game. So it was not interested in draws. “We don’t settle for losing seasons,” Tollner warned, after the game. “We don’t want 4-5-1. And we want now to win at Tokyo next week (against Oregon in the Mirage Bowl).

It was not Tollner’s only gamble of the week. Earlier, he had benched the veteran quarterback, Sean Salisbury, in favor of a redshirt quarterback--the swift, flashy but inexperienced Rodney Peete. It was Peete who won him the game with a quarterback sneak on fourth down with 1 minute 13 seconds left to play in the game.

In short, it was Tollner’s day. He kept turning over aces-full all day. “When we came in at the half (behind 13-7), I said, ‘Hey, we played a mediocre first half and we’re only down by six!’ ” Tollner said.

Any riverboat gambler could have predicted Tollner’s play then. When the sucker keeps getting good cards and settling for small pots, you know his luck is going to change. When it does, you see him and raise.

That’s what Tollner and USC did. When they had a game that should have been 28-7 and was only 13-10, they bet the rent money, shot the moon.

They were hot. Tollner should have gone direct to Las Vegas as soon as the gun went off. And borrowed on his house before he left. The gods love a guy who thumbs his nose at the percentages. They threaten guys with the Holiday Bowl who don’t.