CSUN Funnyman a Regular Riot : Linebacker Wallace Keeps Team Loose and Opposing Quarterbacks on the Run

Tension should be running high today at Mustang Stadium in San Luis Obispo where Cal State Northridge will play Cal Poly San Luis Obispo at 1 p.m. in the first-round of the NCAA Division II football playoffs. So pardon the Matadors if they still happen to be giggling as they step off the team bus.

It’s just that when Ken Wallace talks, CSUN players usually burst out laughing.

Few men drop both one-liners and quarterbacks with the ease of Northridge’s 6-foot-3, 240-pound outside linebacker.

“I hear him all the time at the back of the bus holding court,” CSUN Coach Bob Burt said. “It’s funny stuff. All ad-lib. I told him that when his football days are over, someday I’d be paying to see him at the Improv.”

Wallace holds no such aspirations. “It’s just my personality,” he said. “I don’t think I could do it in front of people I don’t know. Just the fellas, the people I normally hang out with.”

Comedy might come naturally, but there is reason behind Wallace’s routine.

“You can’t think about football 24 hours, seven days a week,” he said. “It’ll drive you crazy. I don’t like guys being so uptight thinking about what they’ve got to do all the time, so I bust a joke and get them laughing.”

Wallace, who grew up in Bossier City, La., near Shreveport, seems to spin away from blockers as effortlessly as he spins a yarn. He received Northridge’s nomination for Western Football Conference defensive player of the year after leading the Matadors with 14 sacks and 20 tackles for losses this season.

In Northridge’s defensive alignment, there are three down linemen and four linebackers. Wallace usually can be found flanking one of the tackles, his eyes riveted on the man calling signals.

Sometimes they’re looking back.

“You can tell when they’re looking around,” Wallace said. “They want to make sure they know where you’re coming from.”

Wallace, an affable and easy-going senior, is a mild-mannered Southern gentleman aside from the few seconds before and after a quarterback takes a snap. His primary assignment is to rush the quarterback, something easier said than done.

Because Wallace’s job rarely changes, the element of surprise is gone.

“One game we played they were hollering out my number every play,” Wallace said. “Forty-nine left, 49 right,’ so they’d know where they needed the extra man to block me.”

Wallace takes the attention as a compliment but it makes matters no less frustrating.

“The tackles, they just play me one way,” he said. “They respect my speed so much they don’t play football. They just go to a spot where they know I’ve got to go around them.”

Against Santa Clara three weeks ago, Wallace was credited with 5 1/2 sacks. He hurried Craig Bergman, the Broncos’ 6-6, 220-pound quarterback, into bad passes on several other occasions.

“I don’t think we blocked him once all night,” Terry Malley, Santa Clara’s coach, said admiringly.

Not that they didn’t try. Twice, Wallace eluded one lineman only to be double-teamed by a Bronco running back--whom he promptly ran over on his way to dropping Bergman.

As with a joke, the best way to a quarterback is a good straight line.

Burt says Northridge’s last two games, losses to San Luis Obispo and Cal State Long Beach, have been among Wallace’s worst of the season.

“They were bad for him, let’s put it that way,” Burt said. “They were average games and he shouldn’t have average games. He’s a dominant player.”

And a dominant personality. Both traits should come in handy today in the rematch with the Mustangs.

“If I think everyone is too tight, then I’ll bust a joke to get their minds off it,” Wallace promised. “But when it’s time to get serious, I’ll be serious.”

It was during a somber moment only 15 days ago, shortly after San Luis Obispo’s 6-3 win over CSUN in the Western Football Conference championship game, that Wallace expressed hope the teams would meet again.

The Mustangs’ only points came after they returned an interception to the Northridge 12-yard line.

“If that turnover takes place anywhere else on the field, they never score,” Wallace said. “We were down because they beat us, but now we have a second chance to go get what’s ours. I wanted San Luis Obispo. No joke.”