A RINGLEADER : San Fernando Offense Wrapped Around Wynn’s Finger

The gold band on the ring finger of Michael Wynn’s left hand sparkled in the sun as the San Fernando High quarterback whistled a pass downfield, the kind of picture-perfect bullet capable of cutting a three-foot swath through the grittiest blanket of Valley smog.

Wynn, one of the most popular students on campus, cuts a pretty winsome figure himself, and the shiny new ring only added another element of flash to the picture. Yet, the location of the jewelry raised a question.

Yo, Mike, what’s with the ring thing? After all, the hunk of jewelry on his hand contains as much gold as your average class ring. And it’s the kind of band most guys wear on that particular finger only after they’re . . . married?

“Nah, nah, nothing like that, this is my good-luck ring,” Wynn said as he motioned toward the end zone at the north end of the San Fernando field. “I found it one day out here. I was walking around barefoot on the field and I actually stepped on it.”

Wynn, too, has showed his precious mettle during his first two seasons at San Fernando. After a junior season in which Wynn earned All-City Section 4-A Division honors, he has been ranked by preseason publications as one of the top major-college prospects in the nation, and one of the best pure athletes at any position.

Virtually unanimous in their appraisal, the experts say it is the marriage of Wynn’s size (6-foot-3, 205 pounds) and speed (4.6 seconds in the 40) that makes him the prototypal player for most any college offense emphasizing a mobile quarterback.

Foster Andersen, formerly an assistant coach at USC who now runs a Granada Hills-based high school scouting service, remembers when he first stumbled across Wynn at a San Fernando game in 1987. And considering that Andersen was there specifically to scout Tiger quarterback Joe Mauldin, Wynn must have seemed like a diamond in the rough.

“He was at tight end, defensive back, outside linebacker--he was all over the place,” Andersen said. “Wynn was the kind of guy who just jumped out at you.

“I remember I walked up to (Coach) Tom Hernandez and said, ‘Who is this guy?’ And Hernandez says, ‘He’s only a sophomore.’ ”

At San Fernando High, which is celebrating its 75th season of football, players are scrutinized long before they enter the three-year school. Wynn was noticed early by Hernandez and his staff, who invited the 14-year-old ninth-grader to a varsity game.

Wide-eyed as they come, Wynn was allowed into the locker room at halftime. While engaging in casual banter, a San Fernando assistant mentioned to Hernandez that Wynn might be a candidate to replace Mauldin when the latter graduated after the 1987 season.

Wynn said that his hair stood on end, a la Don King’s shock. After all, Wynn had spent his career chasing quarterbacks, not emulating them.

“I was shocked,” said Wynn, who turned 17 three months ago. “I had never thrown a football. I had been a middle linebacker, cornerback, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. I was basically a rover.

“When the idea came to arise, I really didn’t think too much about it. I figured it was some kind of mistake.”

Wynn started at safety as a sophomore, but Hernandez soon started dropping hints to the local media about the new quarterback on the horizon. This seemed a little premature to some, considering the season that Mauldin--who would make the All-City team--was having.

Wynn served as Mauldin’s apprentice in ‘87, the season Hernandez canned the school’s rather rustic wishbone set. Last season, with only a few downs of experience at the position, Wynn started at quarterback and completed an improbable 108 of 209 passes for 1,614 yards and 24 touchdowns. He threw only eight interceptions as the team finished 8-4.

A season later, San Fernando’s offense is as wide open as it has ever been, replete with multiple sets, rollout plays, a tight end for the first time and a handful of plays for Wynn to call at the line of scrimmage should the whim strike him.

Tonight at 7:30, Wynn will lead San Fernando in its opener at Fontana, ranked No. 4 in the state by Cal-Hi Sports. The bus ride to Fontana, located north of Riverside, will take hours. For Wynn to get where he is, though, took an entire season.

San Fernando’s successful 1988 schedule was marred by bookend losses to Banning, a perennial City 4-A title contender. In the opener, Wynn completed a pedestrian 10 of 25 passes for 94 yards and threw two interceptions as the Tigers fell, 25-10. He did, however, score on a 12-yard run that gave San Fernando a 10-7 lead in the first half.

Yet Wynn said that he felt like he was stark naked in front of a full house. Trying to pass himself off as a quarterback in front of Banning fans made him feel like the emperor with no clothes.

“It was terrifying, to tell you the truth,” he said. “If I thought I could have, I would have torn my clothes off and waited in the locker room to see who won at the end.

“I didn’t want to go out there. I had never played a down of high school football at quarterback, really. I’d never really thrown a football in a game. And this was Banning, a City power.”

As the game progressed, though, Wynn picked up steam. Hernandez carefully scripted plays that stayed within Wynn’s limitations, and, in the second half, Wynn said something clicked. Self-doubt began to diminish.

What at first looked like a deranged version of tick-tack-toe, the X’s and O’s finally started making sense.

“We started a drive on our own 10-yard line or so, and I completed five passes in a row,” Wynn recalled. “The first one was like, ‘Hey, that wasn’t that bad, let’s try it again.’

“Coach knew what he was doing. He was building up my confidence by throwing real short curl passes--and I hit five in a row.

“After that I could not wait until the next game. It became fun. And it became second nature.”

A few months later, he was hardly the same player, and everyone noticed the difference. In Banning Round II, a 4-A playoff semifinal game, Wynn put on a one-man show.

“We had a hard time bringing him down in the first game,” Banning Coach Joe Dominguez said. “We could see he was a good athlete then, and we respected his ability.

“After the second game--he must have thrown for 250 yards--we respected him even more.”

Indeed, in the teams’ second meeting, Wynn was nothing less than spectacular. He rushed for 46 yards and passed for 237 yards and four touchdowns--three of which came off audibles--as San Fernando lost a heartbreaker, 36-34. On Wall Street, they’d term it a benchmark performance. In the eyes of recruiters, Wynn’s stock soared accordingly.

Hernandez, a 1974 San Fernando graduate, called Wynn’s performance the best he’d ever seen by a quarterback at the school. This, of course, instantly propelled Wynn into the penthouse district alongside former Tiger greats such as Anthony Davis (1968-70) and Kenny Moore (1973-75).

San Fernando assistant Bill Frazer, who has spent the past few months buried to the elbows in newspaper clippings while trying to organize a school record book for the forthcoming 75th anniversary celebration, says that the following 19-year-old career passing marks are facing extinction:

* Davis’ touchdown total (29).

* Davis’ yardage total (2,937).

* Davis’ completion total (150).

Wynn set several single-season records in ‘88, including completion percentage (52.7%), touchdown passes (24) and interception percentage (3.8%). He also set a single-game mark for touchdown passes in a game with five against Canoga Park. Sure, Davis’ records were set while running the wishbone, but Wynn’s marks are based on two, not three, seasons at quarterback. Davis also attempted a school-record 425 passes.

With stats like these, some recruiters are bound to think that Wynn is a gem at quarterback. Yet a few are bound to think, in light of his relative inexperience at the position and superior physical talent in other areas, that Wynn is still in the carbon stage and might be better off elsewhere. Hernandez insists that Wynn’s athleticism should not be a double-edged sword.

“There’s not a better quarterback around,” Hernandez said. “Just because he can do other things, people think he can be moved around. And sure, he can come in and solve a lot of problems at a lot of different places, but he is a quarterback.

“When people see a player like that, they think, ‘He can be a fullback, a tight end, defensive back. He can play it all.’

“He solves a lot of problems, fills a lot of holes for a program right away. But anybody that passes him up as a quarterback is missing a very good quarterback.”

Obviously, Hernandez envisions a bright future for Wynn--a B student who already has cleared 700 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test--at any of a number of Division I programs that employ quarterbacks of similar abilities.

“Take a look at a lot of top major colleges and they’ve gone to a guy who can move,” Hernandez said. “Colorado, Michigan, Notre Dame, USC. It’s a different dimension.

“You see, Mike can do all the things that the other quarterbacks do, but he can do one more thing, too. And that’s run.”

Talk of conversion happens each season, most recently last year with speedster Curtis Conway of Hawthorne High, who some scouts projected as a college receiver. Dominguez says it is happening this season at Banning with senior quarterback John Ma’ae, who along with Wynn was a member of the All-City 4-A team last year. Ma’ae, who is practically a Wynn clone at 6-foot-2 and 205 pounds, also is projected as a possible defensive back, receiver or tight end.

QB or not QB, that is the question. Wynn shrugs off such talk. And his logic makes sense.

“It doesn’t really bother me,” he said. “One (magazine) called me and said there was talk that I wasn’t really a true quarterback, that I was a good athlete who kind of got moved there.

“Well, I figure if I can get away with acting like a quarterback while I’m being a good quarterback, then I’ll do it. I made it this far and I’m doing pretty well. I think I can carry it on further.”

Alas, Wynn’s impersonations, if that’s what they are, have their limitations. Apparently, playing quarterback, being involved in student government and the organization of various senior class activities while generally serving as a BMOC has cut down on his performance as . . . groundskeeper?

Yep, Wynn was recruited over the summer to burn the yard lines in five-yard increments across the San Fernando field.

Ideally, of course, the lines are supposed to be parallel. Instead, they look like a geometry problem gone awry, a mess that was compounded when correctly spaced lines were set down. The field now looks as though it was ravaged by a maniac in a four-wheel drive vehicle.

“Me and one of the managers did that,” Wynn said, grinning, as he surveyed the field where he hopes to do some mean two-wheeling this season. “We did them all wrong, so we had to go back and do it again. They’re gonna have to spray some green paint over those wrong lines when the season starts.”

How does one color Wynn? A novice last year, to be sure, but he’s anything but green now.

Anybody for solid gold?