GROOMED AND READY : Matt Stevens, Fifth-Year Senior, Will Be No. 1 Quarterback When UCLA Practice Opens Monday

The job of playing quarterback at UCLA, which recent office-holders have found under the heading 5-Year Plan, has once again fallen to a new, old face.

Matt Stevens is back, adding his name to an expanding list of UCLA quarterbacks who give new meaning to the word “veteran.” So when the Bruins begin football practice Monday, the quarterback leading them will be Stevens, who should look pretty familiar by now.

“I can’t say everything in my career here has gone as planned,” Stevens said. “But I can say I’m very fortunate. I’m very well-groomed.”

Stevens was not talking about his hair. For a quarterback at UCLA, being well-groomed means something else. It means you have been around as long as the furniture.

Just as David Norrie, Steve Bono and Rick Neuheisel, who passed before him, Stevens is a fifth-year senior starter at quarterback, the fourth in succession at UCLA, which may be some sort of a record for endurance.

And if Matt Stevens has learned anything as a quarterback, it is to endure.

If you add Tom Ramsey to the list of Stevens’ predecessors, then each of the four led their teams to New Year’s Day bowl games.

Now it is Stevens’ chance, an opportunity not to be missed, only waited out.

Last season, he was basically a relief pitcher for Norrie, who won the quarterbacking job in the third game of the season.

It didn’t start out that way, though. The quarterback job began as a tag-team match. Stevens came off the bench to take over for Norrie in the season opener against BYU and threw for 117 yards in a 27-24 UCLA victory, much to the delight of Coach Terry Donahue.

“Right then, we figured we had our quarterback,” Donahue said.

But they really didn’t, because the next week at Tennessee, Stevens threw three interceptions, and Norrie became the starter for good the following week against San Diego State.

Donahue’s decision at that time wasn’t so difficult, he said.

“Norrie was hot and he stayed hot,” Donahue said. “Matt just waited patiently.”

Stevens had to wait until Norrie aggravated a muscle pull in his thigh while getting ready for the Rose Bowl. In Norrie’s place, Stevens threw for 189 yards and a touchdown in a 45-28 victory over Iowa.

It was a game noted more for Eric Ball’s 227 yards and four touchdowns, but it was also the game that meant the end of all the waiting for Matt Stevens.

There is no quarterback controversy at UCLA, not like last year when the Norrie-Stevens camps divided themselves evenly early in the season. Donahue said sophomore Brendan McCracken will play some, but that Stevens owns the job.

“He’s very secure as the starting quarterback,” Donahue said.

Security and Stevens have never been very close, so it may take him awhile to get used to this new business. Then again, at the age of 22 and starting his fifth year in school, Stevens has been around the blocking sleds a few times.

Open up at Oklahoma? Hey, no problem. We’re talking well-groomed here.

“There should be no reason for me to be jittery,” Stevens said.

Donahue, however, said Stevens tends to be excitable and might very well be in such a state in the UCLA-Oklahoma game Sept. 6.

“He’s always been excitable, and that’s his personality,” Donahue said. “He needs to be under control. He’ll be nervous. I’ll tell you one thing: His coach will be nervous.”

Here is one thing Stevens says he will be: grown up.

“The thing about last year, I think I was able to mature a lot,” he said. “I’m not bitter at all for the situation. Who knows what would have happened, anyway, if I had played all year.

“I was never treated as a second-string quarterback. I know now that I’m the man they want in there.”

And what kind of quarterback is going to be in there? Donahue said Stevens, besides having an extremely powerful throwing arm, is very adept at ballhandling and faking the ball on play-action passes.

There is more to Matt, but there is also less, Donahue said.

“He’s not fast and he’s not very tall,” Donahue said. “But he has exceptional control of a team at the line of scrimmage and he is a tremendous leader.

“Yeah, he’s short and not real fast,” Donahue said again, “but his head coach is short and not fast, too.”

UCLA Notes

In an interesting move, Troy Aikman, a quarterback transfer from the University of Oklahoma, will not report to the UCLA campus until after the Bruins play the defending national champion Sooners. “If we brought Troy in early, we would open ourselves up to what might be a bad situation,” Coach Terry Donahue said. “If we did have him here and we were fortunate enough to beat OU, people would say our victory was tainted, that we had a spy in our camp.” Aikman will be redshirted this year and will have two years of eligibility remaining. He is an I-formation quarterback who became lost in Coach Barry Switzer’s offensive plan when the Sooners switched from the Marcus Dupree I-formation era back to the wishbone offense. Donahue said Switzer telephoned him on behalf of Aikman. . . . The Bruins’ practices will be closed to the public until after the Oklahoma game. . . . The UCLA captains this season are senior center Joe Goebel and senior quarterback Matt Stevens on offense, and junior nose guard Terry Tumey, junior linebacker Ken Norton Jr. and senior strong safety Craig Rutledge on defense. . . . Donahue said there won’t be any problems dividing the playing time between tailbacks Gaston Green, Eric Ball and James Primus. He said all of them will play. “We’re not as interested in building a Heisman Trophy winner as we are in building a good football team,” he said. “They realize they’re going to have to give up a little bit for the betterment of the team, and they’re dealing with that.” Both Green and Ball have been mentioned on several All-American lists. . . . This might be worth remembering: UCLA has never lost when opening the season against the defending national champions. It’s happened four times. In 1939, the Bruins beat TCU; in 1962, they beat Ohio State; in 1972, they beat Nebraska, and last season, the Bruins defeated BYU. . . . UCLA returns 14 starters, eight on defense, from last year’s 9-2-1 team that won the Rose Bowl for the third time in the last four years. . . . Of the 19 freshmen UCLA recruited, Donahue said the best opportunities to make the team are at tight end (Charles Arbuckle, Eric Zeno and Corwin Anthony) and linebacker (Brian Jones, Rocen Keeton and Randy Austin). . . . Center Lance Zeno, Eric’s brother, bench-pressed 375 pounds, the best among all the freshmen. . . . Donahue said probably his major area of concern is the kicking game, where placekicker John Lee is gone, as well as the kickoff specialist, punter and both deep snappers. . . . Donahue, a member of the UPI Board of Coaches, said he voted Oklahoma No. 1. He wouldn’t say what position he picked the Bruins, only that it was in the top 20.