UCLA 27, STANFORD 17 : LODISH’S HIGH : UCLA Tackle Lives Out a Dream With Game-Winning Touchdown

Defensive linemen, the anonymous hulks who do all the heavy lifting, have the same rich fantasy life their high-powered brethren do. You would think that ambition for the public life would have long since been knocked out of them.

But, as it turns out, the game’s grunts also imagine themselves scoring winning touchdowns, talking on TV, maybe even dating a cheerleader or two.

At the very least, gaining some attention. There’s nose guard Jim Wahler, late in the game, lifeless at midfield. Injury timeout, injury being the best thing you could feign, you think. “I was just tired,” he said later. Somebody remembered he had a “tired” timeout in another recent game. “Sheesh,” he said, “we need all the pub we can get.”

But Mike Lodish, although not nearly so calculating, went Wahler some better. He scored the winning touchdown, talked on TV and, for all we know, is chatting up the cheerleading squad right now.

“I’ve dreamed about this,” he admitted afterward, referring to at least his touchdown in UCLA’s 27-17 come-from-behind victory over Stanford. “It’s the kind of thing all defensive linemen dream about.”

Until achieving the actual thing, of course, it would be embarrassing to admit to such a dream. Here’s Lodish, coming around end, he’s got a bead on the quarterback, he bats the ball away . . . he catches it! . . . he scores! Get ahold of yourself, Mike.

“We all dream about intercepting a pitch, picking up a fumble and scoring,” he said. Had he done a lot of that? “I think I tipped a pass once,” he said. “But the guy caught it anyway.”

Saturday in the Rose Bowl, his little dream was sprung full-blown on Stanford’s unlucky offense. With Stanford on the 25, driven there by a workmanlike sack by Lodish 2 plays earlier, the defensive tackle steamed around end on Stanford quarterback Brian Johnson’s blind side and hit his arm just as Johnson began to throw. “The ball kind of just floated in the air,” Lodish recalled. “Right into my arms. All I could think was don’t fumble it.”

He did better than that. He scored and gave UCLA a 20-17 lead and a switch in momentum that carried a struggling team over the top and into next Saturday’s Pacific 10 championship game against USC.

“I’ve had some fumble recoveries before,” he said, “but never a touchdown. In fact, I was only trying to hit him or jar him.”

Things happen fast, though, and soon Lodish was buried in an end-zone pile. “I couldn’t breathe very well,” he said, remembering that it was difficult to enjoy his glory at first. “But then I looked up and heard the crowd getting into the game.”

And then he had an idea of just what he’d done.

And so did everybody else. “Lodish’s play was one of the biggest all season,” UCLA Coach Terry Donahue said. “It was certainly the biggest play of this football game. It ignited the stadium, and anytime you can put up defensive points, it excites you as a coach.”

Also excited as a coach was Stanford’s Jack Elway. “I’ve been coaching for 38 years, and that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a ball stolen from a quarterback’s hands.”

You especially felt sorry for Johnson, the victim of Lodish’s hard-hitting heroics. Asked what he thought at that moment, Johnson paused and tilted his head at the question. “I was a little surprised,” he said slowly, rolling his eyes.

More empathic was UCLA quarterback Troy Aikman, who in his youth ran the option attack at Oklahoma. Running an option exposes a quarterback to all kinds of misadventures. “Once the ball popped up, and both me and the ball were carried into the end zone,” he recalled helpfully. But these things don’t happen to drop-back passers, ordinarily.

Of course, Stanford quarterbacks were suffering all manner of indignities. Johnson and starter Jason Palumbis had 4 passes intercepted, all but one of them after the ball was tipped by an intended receiver. Palumbis completed 9 straight passes to begin the game but his 10th was intercepted by Eric Turner.

Elway hooked Palumbis, surprising everybody, including Johnson. “I heard my name called just as they were going out into the field,” said Johnson, who had lost his starting job in a surprise decision 6 weeks ago after playing Notre Dame, “and I had a hard time finding my mouthpiece. It was in my sock.”

He said he didn’t expect to replace a quarterback who had completed 9 straight, “but then again I was surprised at the move after the Notre Dame game.”

Palumbis said: “I thought I was having a pretty good start myself,” except for one “pretty bad play.” But at least he was saved the sorry sight of some 253-pound lineman snagging the ball from him and lugging it into the end zone.

Said Johnson: “It’s not a positive thing to happen to you.”

Lodish, a baby-faced junior from the Detroit area, might agree, except he not only had the burden of UCLA’s Rose Bowl hopes riding on him, but the entire fraternity of defensive linemen, whose dreams will now be even more vivid than they were before. Obviously, anything’s possible.