COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’86 : COACHES, PLAYERS, TEAMS AND TRENDS TO WATCH THIS SEASON : UCLA : The Sun Always Seems to Shine on Bruin Football Team, but Donahue Gets Paid to Worry and Is Doing His Best

How good will UCLA be this season?

Let’s look at the talent returning. Begin with starting players. There are 13 from last year’s team that won the Pacific 10 title and rolled over Iowa in the Rose Bowl game. Eight of those starters played on one of the nation’s best defenses. But as usual, there’s also something else returning.

Those would be the notes of caution sounded by Coach Terry Donahue, who for every silver lining finds a cloud. Here is one coach who starts the football race every season under the yellow caution flag. This season isn’t any different for Donahue and UCLA, who in the early going are showing a balanced attack.

The Bruins are rated as high as No. 4 in the nation:

“I’ve never placed any credence in the preseason polls,” Donahue said. “I’ve never thought they were based on any accurate information whatsoever.”

The Bruins, with Gaston Green and Eric Ball at tailback, are six-deep at the running back position:

“I wish we had seven,” Donahue said. “I’m very anxious about that situation going into the Oklahoma game.”

On defense, the eight starters returning come from a squad that last year led the nation against the run:

“But we’re not very big,” Donahue said. “We don’t have a dominant player.”

The consensus is that the Bruins are going to win the Pac-10 in a breeze:

“I don’t know how that translates into wins and losses,” Donahue said.

And so it goes. What’s it all supposed to mean?

Is UCLA actually as good as a lot of people believe, and is a sly Donahue merely trying to make sure that each Bruin head fits nicely inside each Bruin helmet? Or is UCLA really not as wonderful as its press clippings would indicate and is doomsayer Donahue trying to cushion the fall before it occurs?

Donahue’s cautious remarks aside, the Bruins certainly seem to deserve the publicity they have been accumulating as the class act of the conference. Last season, they finished 9-2-1, won the Pac-10 title for the third time in the last four years and finished with their fourth bowl victory in four New Year’s Day appearances under Donahue.

With so many talented players back, the season ought to look pretty bright, but Donahue is putting on his sunglasses.

“I always temper optimism with some caution,” Donahue said. “I don’t say ‘This is the best team I ever had,’ or, ‘If something doesn’t happen, we should win every game.’ I’ve been around the block for too long. I’ve seen too many things happen. So I’m going to reserve any kind of judgment. We’re going to see when we see it.

“I know I have a tendency to fret and to worry, but that’s my job. I’m just being me. Every year, I’ve gone into the season concerned and anxious. To me, I’m right on schedule. I can hardly see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I do see a little flicker of brilliance down there and now I’m just digging down to get it.”

The excavation begins on offense, where six players who were starters last year won’t be in the lineup Saturday in Norman against the defending national champion Oklahoma Sooners. Split end Mike Sherrard is gone, replaced by Flipper Anderson. Both guards, Mike Hartmeier and Jim McCullough, have been supplanted by a pair of seniors, 6-foot 4 1/2-inch, 259-pound Jim Alexander and 6-5, 261-pound Onno Zwaneveld. At left tackle, 6-5 1/2, 258-pound junior Russ Warnick replaces Rob Cox.

When two-year starter Derek Tennell became a scholastic casualty, the Bruins, already thin at tight end, got even skinnier. Neither of Tennell’s two replacements have ever caught a pass in a college game. Joe Pickert, a 6-4, 235-pound junior, moves up to No. 1, with freshman Charles Arbuckle backing him up.

As a group, the offensive line is showing a lot of progress, Donahue said, with 6-5, 264-pound senior center Joe Goebel anchoring the unit. But the absence of McCullough and Hartmeier leaves a void in toughness and competitiveness that must be filled by Alexander and Zwaneveld, Donahue said.

“They need to come up to the standard of the players they replaced and they need to fill that role if we are going to be as good as we were as a group last year,” Donahue said. “We’re progressing, but I just don’t know how far along we are.”

Matt Stevens, a fifth-year senior, returns as quarterback, a position with which he had an on-and-off relationship last season. Mostly, it was David Norrie’s position, but Stevens took over for Norrie in the Rose Bowl and he begins this season as the unchallenged starter.

Although Stevens is not particularly mobile, he has a strong arm, perhaps an even stronger disposition, and ball-handling skills. Maybe the best thing Stevens will do all season long is hand the ball off to one of his talented running backs.

Green and Ball are the best of the bunch, probably two of the best in the nation. Ball, however, has a sore knee and Donahue says he is very doubtful for the Oklahoma game. James Primus, the third tailback, has moved up to No. 2 behind Green for the Oklahoma game and has also become the No. 3 fullback, behind starter Mel Farr Jr. and sophomore Danny Thompson, because Marcus Greenwood’s twisted ankle has been slow in coming around.

“On paper, running back looks like one of the best positions on the team,” Donahue said. “But we’re not as deep there right now because of Eric and Marcus going into the OU game. Neither injury is a season-ending type, but they are nagging things that will certainly impair performance.”

The Bruins lost just three starters from their highly rated defensive unit, but they were important players--right tackle Mark Walen, the Pac-10’s defensive player of the year, and inside linebackers Tommy Taylor and Steve Jarecki. Walen’s replacement is 6-4, 248-pound sophomore Jim Wahler, who has been slowed by the flu this week. Chance Johnson, a 6-1 1/2, 219-pound sophomore, and 6-1 1/2, 227-pound junior Ken Norton Jr. are the new inside linebackers. They join a group that makes up in quickness what it lacks in size.

Nose guard Terry Tumey, for instance, is 6-1 3/4 and only 228 pounds, but Donahue expects him to team with Wahler and 6-5, 245-pound left tackle Frank Batchkoff to lead the Bruins’ line play this season.

“We’re not big, but we’re fast,” Donahue said. “We’ll develop and play well as the season goes along. We don’t have a Reggie Rogers or somebody like that, but we have enough quickness to run to the ball. And I’d much rather be fast and quick than I would be big.”

Three players who started last season have been shuffled out of their spots, at least for the Oklahoma game.

Junior outside linebacker Melvin Johnson has been bumped by sophomore Carnell Lake, who at 6 feet and 202 pounds, has enough speed that he, instead of Green, is going to return kickoffs.

Both starting cornerbacks, Chuckie Miller and Dennis Price, are out because of injuries. Miller missed much of summer practice because of a pulled muscle and a concussion, and Price was forced out of several practices with a pulled muscle. In their places, Donahue is going with sophomores--Darryl Henley for Miller on the left side and Marcus Turner for Price on the right.

It’s open season for the Bruins’ kicking game, which had been the private preserve of John Lee for four years. Either fifth-year senior David Franey or redshirt freshman Alfredo Velasco will get Lee’s old job.

Donahue, who was fearful in the spring, has more confidence in the kicking game nowadays. “It’s gone from very, very disappointing to adequate,” he said.

Donahue also said that any of five Pac-10 teams has a shot at the Rose Bowl--Washington, USC, Arizona, Arizona State, and of course, UCLA.

If the Bruins get that far, it will be because of what they do this season, not because of carry-over from last season, he said. “Teams don’t pick up where they left off the year before. They begin anew. I’ve been trying to educate my team, to tell them they can’t believe all they’ve read about themselves. You’re never as good as people say you are and never as bad as people think, either. The best you can hope for is that some of that will sink in.” UCLA’S 1986 SCHEDULE

Date Opponent Site Time Saturday Oklahoma Norman, Okla. 12:30 p.m. Sept. 20 San Diego State San Diego 7:00 p.m. Sept. 27 CS Long Beach Rose Bowl 7:00 p.m. Oct. 4 Arizona State Rose Bowl TBA Oct. 11 Arizona Rose Bowl TBA Oct. 18 California Berkeley TBA Oct. 25 Washington State Rose Bowl TBA Nov. 1 Oregon State Portland TBA Nov. 8 Stanford Rose Bowl TBA Nov. 15 Washington Seattle TBA Nov. 22 USC Rose Bowl TBA

NOTE: All times Pacific.