Misdirection Play Has the Titans Headed Down and Out

The play is named “the naked bootleg” because it’s supposed to fake the pants off the defense and misnamed because it suggests that there’s nothing left to strip.

With 2:23 remaining in Saturday’s game against Cal State Long Beach, Paul Schulte and the rest of the Cal State Fullerton Titans learned the truth about the naked bootleg. When Schulte, the quarterback, took the center snap, rolled left and got rolled by Long Beach linebacker Pepper Jenkins, all sorts of things were stripped.

The football.

A one-point Fullerton lead.

And, ultimately, any real hope the Titans had of avoiding the worst won-lost record in the school’s football-playing history.

Fullerton had a 35-34 victory in the palm of its hand when Schulte lined up over center for the final time Saturday. Barring disaster, the Titans were in complete control--they had the football, a second-and-nine play near midfield and an opponent with no timeouts.

But you know the Titans.

Disaster wasn’t barred.

The following nine seconds were the longest of this sorry Fullerton season. Schulte went with the play Coach Gene Murphy sent in from the sideline and went against the grain, which is the way the play is designed. Blockers go one way, quarterback goes the other.

It is a risky play to begin with, because it leaves the quarterback all alone, isolated. Naked. Long Beach Coach George Allen, whose team scored one touchdown on a halfback option pass and set up another with a flanker reverse, flinched at the sight of this one, calling it nothing less than “a real gamble.”

It became riskier still with the player Murphy chose to run it. The best man for the job, probably, was Dale Bunn, but Bunn, the old option operator, ran out of eligibility in 1978 and now coaches linebackers for Murphy. The call instead went to Schulte, whose best footwork takes him as far as the back of the pocket. Murphy calls Schulte a tough kid, “a stallion,” but in the open field, his stride more closely resembles that of a Clydesdale.

Jenkins, meanwhile, is a lean, mean, sacking machine, the 49ers’ top defensive player. He lines up on the outside and doesn’t take long to get inside, as his team-leading 16 tackles illustrated Saturday.

In the post-mortem, even Murphy had to admit: “When it’s Jenkins against Schulte, there is no trickery involved.”

So why call the play at all?

“Long Beach was out of timeouts, we wanted to hang onto the ball, go north-south, and stay on the wide side of the field,” Murphy said. “We wanted to keep (Schulte) in bounds and keep the clock running.

“He just got run down by a great athlete.”

More than that, Jenkins ran down the football. As he popped Schulte, Jenkins also sprung loose the ball, sending it bounding into the arms of defensive end Ed Lair at the Fullerton 44.

Two minutes later, the 49ers were at the Fullerton three, and Sean Cheevers’ chip-shot field goal turned the Titans into 37-35 losers.

“Part of the game,” Schulte kept saying, hoping to convince himself. “I was trying to get as much yardage as I could. I was just trying to stay in bounds and get as much as I could. . . . “

Jenkins hit Schulte a yard behind the line of scrimmage.

Schulte got as much as he could.

As did Long Beach. Schulte wondered aloud about the fumble. He wondered if it actually should have been ruled a dead ball instead of the live wire it eventually became.

“I thought I was close to being down,” Schulte said. “I thought I was right on the ground, or at least very close to it.”

That sounded very close to sour grapes, which Schulte quickly noticed and cut off at the pass.

“I should have had two hands on it,” he said.

That’s the kind of year it has been for Fullerton. That’s the kind of year it has been for Schulte. On the cusp of the finest game of his college career--Schulte shredded an indecisive Long Beach secondary for 343 yards and three touchdowns--he loses everything but the statistics on one misdirected misdirection play around left end.

This was going to atone for the five interceptions in the 48-17 loss to Akron.

This was going to erase the sting of the six sacks against Hawaii and the five against Auburn and the four against Pacific.

This was going to make all the pounding--the bone- and soul-jarring hits Schulte is forced to endure play after play, Saturday after Saturday--worth it.

“He’s taken a beating this year,” Murphy says with empathy. “He’s spent a lot of time on his back.”

But the cruelest hit was delivered by Jenkins, for all it meant to this Fullerton season, now the favorite to become the worst of all Fullerton seasons.

Saturday’s defeat left the Titans 1-8 with three games to play. The opponents in those games: San Jose State (co-leader of the Big West), Utah State (which tied the Big West’s other co-leader, Fresno State, and lost to San Jose by a touchdown) and New Mexico State. New Mexico State is winless, but the game will be in Las Cruces, so you never know.

Assume a victory at New Mexico State. That would make these Titans 2-10. The previous low at Fullerton is 2-9, set in 1975, Fullerton’s first season at the Division I-A football level.

“We’ve experienced a lot of frustration this year,” Schulte said, “but I still enjoy it. I love football.”

Football, however, refuses to reciprocate. And unrequited love is the saddest love of all.