COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’87 : COACHES, PLAYERS, TEAMS AND TRENDS TO WATCH THIS SEASON : GASTON GREEN : UCLA Tailback Taking Heisman Hype in His Powerful Stride

Gaston Green hasn’t been able to get the sleep he needs before his afternoon practice because of all the interviews he has to do every day. And reading his mail takes about five times longer than it used to. And, oh yeah, his teammates nag him a lot to make sure he finds time for the weight room.

Green thought about it a little more, then flashed that bright smile and said in that soft, easy, matter-of-fact way of his: “That’s about it.”

That’s it? That’s all there is to the Heisman Trophy dash?

Over the last few months, this young tailback has had his picture on the cover of Street & Smith, Sport and the Sporting News College Football Yearbook. Inside Sports used a small picture of him on the cover, but inside there was a full-page color photo showing him posing with UCLA’s only Heisman Trophy, the one that quarterback Gary Beban won 20 years ago.

In the early handicapping for the Heisman Trophy, Inside Sports has him No. 1; Sport has him No. 2 behind Michigan’s Jamie Morris and the Sporting News has him No. 2 behind Notre Dame’s Tim Brown.

UCLA has already printed posters, flyers and weekly update full-color postcards that will make Gaston Green one of the premier names in college football this season.

Pretty mind-boggling for a kid who just turned 21, wouldn’t you think? And the only effect it has on him is that he misses a couple of naps?

Gaston Green, it would appear, is unflappable.

In the media mania over Green, it has been discovered that Green is an ardent Humphrey Bogart fan who watches “Casablanca” by the hour and, if pressed, will admit that he has always longed to have Bogey’s tough but cool composure. Actually, he’s more like Jimmy Stewart in his simple, disarming charm. He’d fit more neatly into “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

If you’ll remember, Mr. Smith by-gollied his way right over those smooth-talking villains he was up against.

Mel Farr, a fullback who has been playing alongside Green for years, and Eric Ball, himself a talented tailback who plays behind Green at the moment, were strolling across the Westwood campus when they were asked about Green’s handling of the Heisman hype.

When he stopped laughing, Ball said: “Gaston is Gaston. He’s not going to change. He’s just going about his business like he always does.

“The biggest problem he has to deal with is the teasing from all of us. I keep telling the boy he better win the thing, get all the attention focused over here because I want to bring it back here again next year.”

But what about the ego? What about a new cockiness? Forget the old buddies? Play the prima donna in practice?

Farr just smiled and shook his head.

Coach Terry Donahue says that Green is not showing signs of strain. And Donahue was, at the time, grousing about why Sports Illustrated would pick his team No. 2 in the nation.

“I don’t think Gaston knows what kind of pressure is out there,” Donahue said. “He’s young. What does he know?

“No, I’m kidding. That’s not true. He knows what the stakes are, but he’s just an easygoing kind of guy. He handles pressure very well.”

In building him up for the Heisman Trophy, UCLA’s sports information director, Marc Dellins, has made a point of stressing not just the number of yards that Green has amassed, but the games in which he has done it.

He has had some of his biggest games against USC, a game that is almost always a key to the Rose Bowl race. And a game that is huge for Green, who is from Gardena High School. He has friends playing there and he knows that the stands are filled with friends, relatives, neighbors, whether at the Coliseum or the Rose Bowl.

It was a tough decision for him when he ignored hundreds of other offers and chose between UCLA, the school he really liked most, and USC, the school with the football team famous for turning out Heisman Trophy winners.

His mother told him that if he was good enough, he could win the Heisman Trophy at any school, so he chose the team that was having the most success at the time and set his sights on becoming the first Bruin running back ever to win the Heisman.

Donahue lists winning the city championship second on his list of priorities, right after winning the Pac-10 title and right ahead of winning the national title.

There’s pressure in a USC game.

As a freshman, Green rushed for 134 yards against the Trojans. As a sophomore, he rushed for 145. And as a junior, he rushed for 224--the most ever gained by one back against the Trojans.

There’s pressure in bowl games, right? National ranking on the line, national TV. As a freshman, Green gained 144 yards against Miami in the Fiesta Bowl. As a sophomore, he was injured early in the Rose Bowl game against Iowa and sat down in the second quarter with 46 yards. As a junior, he gained 266 yards against Brigham Young University in the Freedom Bowl.

The pressure of the Heisman Trophy build-up? He has already faced that. Before he rolled up 266 yards against a BYU defense that had been ranked sixth in the nation against the run and had held Temple’s Paul Palmer, the eventual runner-up in the Heisman race, to just 67 yards, Green had been pictured on the cover of the Freedom Bowl guide as a “1987 Heisman Trophy candidate.”

That qualifies as the official launching of the campaign. It’s a game that has to be played--before the games of the senior season begins--to get a player into the running.

Dellins contacted all the major publications right after the bowl games to be sure that Green was considered for their preseason teams, their major feature articles and their covers.

“The idea is to give him a good foundation,” Dellins said. “Whether he wins it or not depends on what he does, if he has the kind of year he’s capable of having. But people need to know about him first, so they’ll be watching.”

That’s why Dellins had those nice picture postcards printed. Instead of hoping that the Heisman Trophy voters and the major publications dutifully check the tiny type in their Sunday papers--in some cases Monday papers because night games on the West Coast don’t always end in time for East Coast deadlines--Dellins will update Green’s statistics and accomplishments immediately after every game and put those cards in the mail.

Nothing to open; nothing to study. Just a picture of Green in his UCLA uniform next to a Heisman Trophy on one side and the numbers on the other side.

Getting the numbers will be Green’s job, but that’s never been a problem.

Along with his record performance in the Freedom Bowl, Green set a UCLA single-season record with his 1,405 yards last season. And that was after missing all of the Cal State Long Beach game and most of the Arizona State game with a toe injury. His 17 touchdowns also set a Bruin season record.

He carried the ball 253 times and fumbled it just once, and consensus is that it was on a bad pitch.

In three seasons, he has rolled up 2,633 yards and is a cinch to set the school rushing record, if only he can stay uninjured.

Donahue remarks about that every few minutes.

And yet Green insists that he is neither injury-prone nor fragile. He’s a muscular 5 feet 10 1/2 inches and 195 pounds.

He had hamstring problems coming out of high school but says he has learned how to guard against that. He missed four games and part of another his sophomore year after a teammate was blocked into the side of his knee at practice. And he missed most of the Rose Bowl game that season with a pulled hamstring. He was out for one game and parts of two others last season with turf toe.

Those are not chronic problems, he says, adding that the UCLA track coaches have taught him proper stretching and training to take care of his hamstrings.

John Smith, who coaches UCLA’s sprinters and who has worked with Green, put it this way: “Gaston just had to learn how to work with that body of his. He’s not a frail little thing. He has good size. He’s very strong. But he had to learn control, learn what his body is doing.

“If you have a blowout in a VW, you ease off the road. If you’re racing around in a Ferrari on a bad wheel, you’re in trouble. Gaston’s a Ferrari. With that kind of speed and power, you have to know how to handle it. To stay under control in a Ferrari on a fast corner, you have to brake, downshift, and then accelerate. Gaston has to think the same way. He can’t do everything full speed.

“He is getting older and stronger. His body is getting more mature, and now Gaston’s getting used to what it can do and how he should handle it.”

Everyone talks about Green’s breakaway speed, but that is one thing that Green can’t supply numbers on. Nobody wants to put a stopwatch on him for fear of endangering those hamstrings.

So how fast is he? Well, he can flat-out tell you that nobody is going to catch him from behind. And he can tell you that he keeps up with Bruin receiver Flipper Anderson, who, they say, has been timed at 4.35 seconds for 40 yards.

In praising Green’s tailback talent from a track coach’s point of view, Smith said: “Gaston Green is a naturally gifted sprinter who can do it with the uniform on and the ball in his hands. Most people don’t realize that with a football uniform on, they couldn’t get in and out of their car. In fact, some folks I know would have trouble scratching their head.”

He added: “The good Lord put everything in there when he built Gaston Green.”

When Dellins finds quotes like that, he makes reprints and mails them to the Heisman Trophy voters.

And in come more interview requests.

Green routinely stops into the sports information office after his morning meetings, knowing that there will be calls to return and TV interviews to record.

To prepare him for all this, Dellins coached him on opening up, letting his personality shine through, getting away from the “yes” and “no” answers he used to give.

When he had his big game in the Fiesta Bowl his freshman year, and was brought to the interview room, he was overwhelmed and said next to nothing.

Dellins also practiced with Green in front of a video camera, working on eye contact and diction so that he comes across well on TV.

And he is much better.

His father thinks he looks better on TV than in print. “When people see him on TV and hear him speak and see him react, when they see what his personality really is, they’ll see the sincerity and the innocence as well as the maturity,” his dad said. “They’ll see what he’s really like, and he’s not shy, the way some people think.”

Green’s father’s name is also Gaston, one in a long line. Here’s the story behind that:

--The guy competing for the Heisman Trophy is Gaston Green III because his father is Gaston Green Jr. But, actually, his father should have been III because his father was also Gaston Green Jr., but our hero’s grandmother didn’t know that, so his dad is another Jr. and he’s a III instead of a IV.

In any event, Gaston Green, the father of this family and formerly a high hurdler at Arizona State, is helping the Heisman Trophy effort of his son with more than just athletic genes.

He’s fending off the agents, including Norby Walters, who put Green’s name into some not-needed headlines when an FBI investigation of Walters’ business practices turned up a phone bill with Green’s number on it.

Green and his father have both explained that Green took an incoming call, then referred all business to his father. His father says he told them, as he tells all agents, to put proposals in writing and mail them--to be considered by Green after his senior season is over.

“I’d say eight or nine agents have called,” Green’s father said. “I tell them all the same thing.

“It’s not just the agents. We get people coming by here now who haven’t seen Gaston in 10, 15 years. I’m sure they truly wish him well, but it’s interesting that they’re just now thinking of him again. Will they be around 10 years from now?

“Gaston has a real clear understanding of what this is all about. He’d be pleased to win the Heisman, and he knows what that would mean to his career, his finances, his opportunities.

“He knows that if he wins the Heisman Trophy, there will be a lot of things involved besides his accomplishments. There’s the team, the attitude of others, the media, the push from the school.

“He’s a worthy candidate. But he’s not going to get caught up in all the glitter and glamour and let it build him up until he forgets who he is. He can handle it. He’s taking it all very much in stride, the way he takes everything.”