UCLA : Now That Lee Has Gone, the Job Goes to Either Franey or Velasco

In the last four years, the success of the UCLA kicking game was measured in feet--the two that belong to John Lee. But since Lee has left, the distance to the crossbars seems much longer for the Bruins, maybe because the two kickers trying to take his place have never gotten that far yet.

The Bruins believe there is no sense worrying about how to replace Lee, whose uncanny ability to kick footballs through the uprights ought to make Coach Terry Donahue downright concerned now that he doesn’t have him around anymore.

So why isn’t Donahue shaking right down to his kicking tee or spending long, lonely hours pacing the hash marks late at night?

“Because John Lee is impossible to replace,” Donahue said.

The Bruins are going to try, anyway. There are two possibilities with the same drawback. One possibility is fifth-year senior David Franey and the other is redshirt freshman Alfredo Velasco, neither of whom have ever attempted a field goal in a college football game.

This is totally new ground for UCLA to cover because for the past four years they never really worried about Lee once they sent him onto the field. When that happened, the ball always seemed to be on automatic pilot. In his UCLA career, Lee made 85 of 100 field-goal attempts. Last season, Lee made 21 of 24, or 87.5%.

Lee led the Bruins in scoring each of his four seasons, then signed a multimillion-dollar contract with the St. Louis Cardinals. Now that Lee’s gone, Donahue appreciates him even more.

“John Lee was a once-in-a-lifetime kicker,” Donahue said.

Since the odds of finding a once-in-a-lifetime kicker twice aren’t very good, Donahue is learning to make do.

Neither Franey nor Velasco has won Lee’s old job outright, but one of the two will be chosen, Donahue said, although that may not happen until right before the Oklahoma game next Saturday in Norman.

If anyone has the edge, and no one at UCLA is saying anyone does, it could be Franey, who has age on his side. Franey may be slightly more accurate than Velasco, although the freshman is judged to have a stronger leg and a quicker, higher lift on the ball.

But, although the John Lee era may have ended at UCLA, his legacy lives on.

“I think I know how the tailback at Auburn feels after Bo Jackson,” Franey said.

“I look at it like this: When you’ve got an All-American, a superstar at a position, the obvious question is whether a team can find someone to fill his shoes,” Franey said. “I’ll tell you that someone will fill John Lee’s job. Whether someone will fill his shoes and kick as well, I don’t know.”

Donahue believes either Franey or Velasco or a combination of the two is going to be good enough this year, but until then there still must be some anxiety lingering up to the moment they kick in a game for the first time.

Don Riley, the UCLA kicking coach, has charted more than 300 kicks by each player during practice sessions, but besides accuracy, he considers quickness equally important. From the time the ball is snapped until it is kicked, Riley wants no more than 1.31 seconds to elapse.

“So far, they’ve been right on it,” Riley said. “The thing these guys have to realize is that they’re not in competition with John Lee. Sure, they haven’t kicked a ball in a game yet, but all they have to do is put the ball above the crossbar for UCLA.”

Velasco hasn’t put a ball above the crossbar in a game since he did it for Burbank High School in 1984. It’s been even longer for Franey, who last kicked a field goal in a game five years ago, in 1981 when he was a high-schooler in Raytown, Mo.

“I’ll be a little nervous,” said Franey, a soccer-style kicker, who paces off his kicking distance from the ball the same way as Lee--three steps back and two to the left. Velasco also kicks in that manner.

“John used to pretend he was playing guitar for Van Halen when he was kicking,” Franey said. “I’ll probably do some kind of self-hypnosis. I’ll visualize making the kick, be relaxed and watch the ball go between the goal posts.”

All the while Lee was kicking for UCLA, it was easy to imagine the ball going through the goal posts because it nearly always did. It’s going to be a lot harder to visualize this season in the first of the post-Lee years.

“When you’re the guy following John Lee, it’s kinda scary,” Velasco said. “You know you’ll never make people forget about him, no matter how well you do. No matter how well you kick, you won’t be satisfied. At least people will be watching us. We’re going to get some exposure.”

The new field-goal kicker is going to get one break, though. The holder, David Clinton, will still be around, just as soon as he comes back from arthroscopic knee surgery. Clinton should help, although Franey realizes that the UCLA field goal is no longer a cinch. From now on, UCLA field goals are going to be more like an adventure.

“It was so automatic with John,” Franey said. “Guys would just go down and sit on the bench when John kicked and wait for him to get it over with. Now, maybe we’ll keep them standing up, at least for a while.”

So for the UCLA kicking game, the suspense is back, even if John Lee isn’t.