COMING OF AGE : At Age 26, Fullerton’s Bavaro Has Grown Into a Pro Prospect

When John Bavaro went AWOL after Cal State Fullerton’s seventh game last season, Fullerton coaches were distressed and dismayed. But they couldn’t say they hadn’t had any warning.

More than a year earlier, Bavaro had arrived at San Diego State for preseason practice, an explosive 24-year-old community college lineman coaches were counting on to shore up a young defense.

But before the season began, Bavaro was gone, citing personal problems.

Without him, the Aztecs went on to finish 98th in country in scoring defense in 1987, allowing almost 36 points a game. The next year they finished 100th, allowing almost 35.

Bavaro, who says now that things “just didn’t work out” at SDSU, surfaced at Fullerton the next season, where he played for defensive line coach Gary Spielbuehler, who had coached him at Glendale College.

He had 25 tackles in seven games, six of those for losses. And then he left, with little or no explanation.

This year, Bavaro is back. But after a conversation with him, his baffling disappearances have begun to make more sense.

At 26, he is eight years older than the youngest player on the Fullerton team, and he has his responsibilities. While some other players were worrying about how to stretch a scholarship to cover the costs of a few nights out, Bavaro was worrying about how to stretch his to support a son, soon to be 3 years old, who lives in Canyon Country with Bavaro’s wife, from whom he is separated.

Bavaro worried, and he decided he needed to earn money.

“I’ve got a little boy. I love my little boy,” Bavaro said.

He loves football, too, but between football and a little boy, no contest.

“I had to drop,” Bavaro said. “There was no way I could do both. All this . . . piled up. I couldn’t concentrate on football.”

Bavaro turned back to construction work, which he has done off-and-on since he was 18. At 6-feet-3, 260 pounds, he is rather employable. He saved money and went to school during the spring and summer to make up the credits he had lost.

“Things got worked out,” Bavaro said.

Now he is back with the Titans, a fact that has been noted with displeasure by Fullerton’s first three opponents. And when San Diego State plays Fullerton Saturday, the Aztec offensive lineman will be trying to fend off someone who was once one of their own.

In the Titans’ opener, a 26-17 Fullerton loss to Northern Illinois, he provided a sampling of his talent.

Bavaro, a distant relative of Mark Bavaro, the New York Giants tight end, had seven tackles--six unassisted, three for losses--and a blocked extra-point attempt.

After watching the films, Northern Illinois Coach Jerry Pettibone called Bavaro the best defensive lineman his team had played against in his five years as coach.

“Bavaro will be drafted,” Pettibone said. “He’s a great football player. He gave us fits.”

Two of his tackles for losses came on back-to-back plays in the fourth quarter after the Huskies drove to a first-and-goal at the Fullerton 8. Northern Illinois, set back to the 17 by Bavaro, had to settle for a field goal.

Bavaro is a bit more intent on the game than the typical college player, and his ability is all the more impressive because he is still fairly new to football.

He never played a game in high school because, Bavaro said, he never felt comfortable with the program at either of two schools he attended, La Canada and Westminster.

He never played a college game until he was 22, at Glendale. Before that, he had been a construction worker and a bouncer--a job more prestigiously known as a nightclub security official, Bavaro jokes.

But weight rooms were more Bavaro’s scene than clubs, and a friend put him in touch with coaches at Glendale, where Spielbuehler was then coaching.

“When I first saw him, he’d never had experience playing in a game at all,” Spielbuehler said. “The one thing he had was that natural explosiveness and quickness, those assets he still has now.”

Spielbuehler put him on a crash course.

“He was learning things you normally learn in high school,” Spielbuehler said.

He caught up quickly, and as a sophomore was named the most valuable community college defensive player in Southern California.

He has made up for lost time by putting in extra hours with the film projector, many of them in the Fullerton football offices, which are equipped with just about everything Bavaro could want or need: plenty of projectors, plenty of game films, a couple of televisions, a refrigerator, a few sofas and a shower.

Late into some evenings and occasionally into the earliest hours of morning, Bavaro sits alone, working the controls of a projector. For a time last year, he even slept and showered at the office.

He keeps his eyes on the screen, and his distance from many of the players. They don’t really have much in common, he says.

“I don’t really mess around much,” Bavaro said. “I’m here to play football and go to school.”

He also is there to try to impress professional scouts, hoping to be chosen in the National Football League draft, hoping for a career that can put behind the worries of unpaid bills.