End of Flamboyance : Matured Hardman Says Football Is Still His Goal

It has been four years since Cedrick Hardman, the former football coach at Laguna Beach High School, was arrested for possession of cocaine and resisting arrest. Ashamed of the incident and reluctant to discuss it, he wishes the memory would go away.

“What’s that saying . . . the bad that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones?” Hardman said, reciting from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” with an actor’s elocution.

Absent from football since those controversial days, Hardman has resurfaced as a volunteer assistant at Cal State Long Beach, where he teaches how to sack quarterbacks. At 6 feet, 4 inches and a muscular 250 pounds, he looks as if he could still sack one himself.

Now 42, the former all-pro defensive end for the San Francisco 49ers, who has had roles in movies and on television, remains popular and recognizable.

His years in San Francisco were filled with flair. The letters N-A-S-T-Y were on the license plate of his red Lincoln Continental. “I got the name in college from a friend who said I had a bad walk,” he explained at the time.

In tight pants that emphasize thick, sculpted thighs, Hardman still has that intimidating swagger, but his overall flamboyance has faded.

“That was youth ,” he said, laughing. “You go through life and all you need to do is make one big mistake, and if you’ve got any sense at all you’ll sure as hell retire the (flamboyance). These days I try to be as anonymous as I can.”

Hardman was arrested at 2:45 a.m. on Sept. 20, 1986, after two Laguna Beach officers stopped him on Laguna Canyon Road and allegedly found 5.5 grams of cocaine in his car.

A month later, a South Orange County Municipal Court judge allowed Hardman to enter a drug rehabilitation program rather than face trial for felony possession of cocaine and misdemeanor resisting arrest.

The Laguna Beach school board, which at first had suspended Hardman, voted to allow him to coach without pay for the remaining three games of the 1986 season. Critics of the board accused it of accommodating Hardman because he was a sports celebrity.

Early in 1987, Hardman, who had turned a losing team into a winner, decided not to return for a third season as coach. But a group of residents continued a drive that ended successfully that September when voters, in a special election, recalled three members of the board who had voted to retain Hardman.

When asked last week if he had a drug problem when he was at Laguna Beach High, Hardman said, “You know, about 70% or 80% of the population is addicted to something and not cognizant of it.

“We could all use a trip to a rehab facility just to clean up the mess we’ve acquired in our lives. When you’re born you’re clean and free of mess, and then, either from parents or your environment, you begin to acquire mess--prejudices and things that aren’t really natural.”

Hardman, who lives in Laguna Beach, said he has worked as a personal trainer the last few years.

“I ain’t in no trouble,” he said. “I’m a pretty likable guy. I ain’t bitter about nothing that’s happened in my life.”

Hardman was reminded of the time that he reportedly put a different jersey on a Laguna Beach junior varsity player who had been kicked out of a game, and then put him back in.

He laughed uproariously.

“I don’t know, I might have,” he said. “I was accused of it; I don’t remember if I did or didn’t.”

Another time while at Laguna Beach High, he told a Times reporter that he did not have time to follow the rules set down by the California Interscholastic Federation, which governs high school sports.

“That was truly an immature statement,” Hardman said. “Back then I was coming out of the pros, and I did not understand why there were so many rules. Now I know why, because there are so many obsessive people who coach the game, and the rules are there really to protect the kids. I’ve always stayed within the rules.”

Hardman has endeared himself to the Long Beach players as he did to his high school players. They respect his physical presence and knowledge of the game, and are amused when he uses folksy phrases, such as, “Once you get by him (a blocker), you are loose in the backfield like a fox in a henhouse.”

“He’s taught us a lot,” said junior defensive end Ira Morris. “He’s real enjoyable, he just brings a different atmosphere around practice. Some days you’re tired and listless, and he’ll just talk to you and bring you up.”

Long Beach Coach George Allen selected

Hardman from some 200 coaching applicants. Allen remembers painfully how, during a 1981 playoff game, Hardman threw one of Allen’s Washington Redskins for an eight-yard loss on a reverse called by former President Richard M. Nixon.

“I wanted to help him get over the hump because I know he’s a good man,” Allen said. “I think it’s helped him. Once a guy gets a stigma, nobody wants him.”

But Hardman doesn’t feel that he carries a stigma. Now, confident that he has acquired some maturity, he wants to be a head coach, and it doesn’t matter where.

“Hey man, when you love the game the level doesn’t make that much difference,” he said, sounding like an actor delivering an especially dramatic line. “A win in high school is as exciting as a win in the pros. A loss in high school is as devastating as a loss in the pros.”