Lawrence Calls Bruin Party Line : College football: UCLA’s “social life” prompts Morse High football star to put Stanford, others on hold.

All right, forget all this about great football tradition and academic reputation. Let’s get to the heart of this recruiting deal, shall we?

About those parties.

Teddy Lawrence, a player every school wanted and UCLA got, was doing fine on this subject earlier this week until his coach, John Shacklett, plopped down next to him in an office at Morse and began filling out a little paper work.

Suddenly, Lawrence began to shift his eyes every three or four words to check for his coach’s reaction. Night life at UCLA is not for everyone’s ears.

“So we went to a party,” he said.

And he glanced to the left.

His coach kept working.

“It hit home,” he continued. “Just that one party, there were just wall to wall . . . “

He paused, shifted his gaze toward his coach and laughed.

The coach looked up and smiled.

He proceeded cautiously.

“Wall to wall . . .,” he said. “It was wall to wall girls.”

That did it.

“Remember,” Shacklett said, “you make sure you don’t say things you don’t want your mother to read.”

A little sheepishly, Lawrence responded: “Yeah, I know. I’m editing.”

The edited version?

“UCLA,” he said, “had the best social life.”

Teddy Lawrence, the quarterback who led Morse to the 3-A championship and an undefeated season, has been a jet-setter the past six weeks. That happens if you’re a high school kid who plays football better than anybody else in town.

In the span of a month and a half, Lawrence took trips to USC, Washington, Stanford, UCLA and Notre Dame. Average sleep was three, maybe four, hours a night.

Some food was good, some terrible. Lawrence stayed in the best hotels and, with the exception of his final trip to Notre Dame, took each jaunt with Tommy Bennett, his pal and teammate who plays wide receiver and defensive back at Morse.

It was an experience. There were college parties, boring trips through business departments, equally boring campus tours and, of course, an abundance of football talk.

In the end, Lawrence chose UCLA. And no, it wasn’t because of the great parties. It was the chart.

The chart was his guiding light.

It was actually Rick Neuheisel’s idea to map it out on paper. Neuheisel, a former Bruin and Charger quarterback who now coaches receivers at UCLA, made a list of criteria by which to judge each university: football, academics, social environment and proximity.

Neuheisel’s list had UCLA way ahead of the other four schools. For the purpose of objectivity, Lawrence decided to make his own. And UCLA was still on top. Not by quite as much, but enough.

So UCLA it was. Bennett also chose to be a Bruin. And that ended a rather furious six weeks in the life of an otherwise normal high school senior. Along the way, there were many miles and many stories . . .

Uh, Lou? Is that you?

Teddy Lawrence was standing in line at the cafeteria at Notre Dame, waiting to get a little breakfast. Suddenly a recruiter standing behind him said: “Hey, Coach Holtz. I want you to meet Teddy Lawrence.”

Holtz turned. He was the not-so-tall guy in front of Lawrence. The conversation began immediately.

Lawrence made it quite clear a long time ago that he didn’t want to be a quarterback in college. Either defensive back or wide receiver would be fine, but not quarterback. He doesn’t think he can get to the NFL as a quarterback.

Anyway, Holtz started right in asking him about Morse’s option offense.

Lou: “I heard you guys run the option.”

Lawrence: “Yup.”

Lou: “Was it predetermined or did you read it?”

Lawrence: “It was predetermined.”

Lou: “Yeah, that’s what we do.”

That clicked on a warning light.

“I kind of got the hint there that he might want me to play a little bit of quarterback,” Lawrence said.

So then he was in Holtz’s office later in the day. There were pictures and trophies everywhere. Holtz brought it up again.

“So you don’t want to play quarterback?”

Lawrence told him: “No.”

Holtz asked him what he’d like to play and Lawrence said: “I’m cool with either defensive back or wide receiver.”

Teddy Lawrence told Lou Holtz what he wanted to play. And Holtz listened.

Can’t you do something about those uniforms?

Lawrence and UCLA Coach Terry Donahue, just the two of them, sat down to a nice dinner at a nice restaurant in Los Angeles.

At one point, Donahue asked him how he liked UCLA compared to the other schools. Lawrence was quite frank. He told him he had never liked UCLA because it had ugly uniforms.

So Donahue asked what it was he didn’t like.

Lawrence: “The structure of the jersey. The pants. Your pants, I mean you don’t have shiny gold. You just have plain ugly gold and shirts with the stripes on the shoulders.”

He went on to tell him he’d prefer black rather than white cleats.

And Donahue said: “If you come here, you can wear black cleats.”

Lawrence says he plans to supplement his UCLA uniform with black gloves, black forearm pads and a black towel.

The dinner lasted two hours. Two hours . Remember, this was just Lawrence and the man who has a perfect 5-0 record in the Rose Bowl. It got so late that Lawrence missed his plane back to San Diego. That wasn’t a problem. Neuheisel drove him home.

How can we bore you next?

This isn’t all fun, games, food and chats with the head coach. There are times on these trips that are no more exciting than the second hour of a two-hour geometry class.

At USC, Lawrence was given an opportunity to watch the Trojans practice. There was a chill in the air. He stood there for two hours.

Fun?

“I didn’t enjoy it,” he said. “I had my jacket on but it was still cold. It was boring.”

That was cotton candy and roller coasters compared to his trip through the USC business department. The dean of the business school showed him landmarks such as the classrooms, the computers, the room where the tutors work.

“It was terrible,” he said. “I think they should eliminate that part all together unless somebody wants to go.”

He eliminated it himself on his trip to Washington. They mentioned the academic tour and he opted for Plan B, a 20-minute nap in one of the offices.

Stanford was probably the longest trip he took through Sominexville. Recruits were taken to a brunch where about 30 professors gave three-minute speeches on their academic backgrounds and how they wound up at Stanford.

“I almost went asleep,” Lawrence said.

Even the parties were dull. Lawrence went to one at the house of several of the players. The male-female ratio wasn’t to his liking.

“It was like 15 to one,” he said. “If that’s the best party they can throw there . . . I mean, the recruiting weekend you’re supposed to throw the big parties. That party was terrible.”

UCLA was in the back of Lawrence’s mind through the whole process, but many distractions complicate the decision.

Certain things are hard to ignore. Washington Coach Don James, for instance, told Lawrence and Bennett that Washington was going to win the national championship next year. That was a hot topic of discussion on the plane ride back from Seattle.

And Lawrence went to watch track practice at Notre Dame and Raghib Ismail came up to chat and shake his hand.

Lawrence was even asked for his autograph at a Washington Husky basketball game. A kid about 11 years old wouldn’t leave him alone.

“He said: ‘Can you sign this?’ ” Lawrence said. “I said: ‘I don’t want to sign it. I don’t play for them. He said: ‘Come on, I know you’re lying.’ He just kept telling me to sign.”

Bennett didn’t fight it.

“Tommy,” Lawrence said, “was over there signing all kinds of autographs.”

It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of being the center of attention. Fifteen of the 17 players on the USC trip committed then and there. Lawrence and Bennett were the only ones who didn’t. Shacklett told them they weren’t to commit on any of the trips.

Of course, taking five trips can make the final decision that much more difficult, particularly if your mother doesn’t agree with your first choice. Lawrence decided on UCLA after a conversation with Bennett on the evening of Jan. 30. By the next day, after there had already been a newspaper report, Lawrence’s mother, Kathy, was less than thrilled that he selected UCLA over Stanford.

A week later, Kathy Lawrence still isn’t convinced her son made the right decision.

“I’m not totally convinced at all,” she said. “Graduating from Stanford opens a lot of doors. I’m not saying UCLA doesn’t, but I think Stanford opens more.”

The morning after Lawrence made his decision, Shacklett called him and found that he still wasn’t completely certain.

Donahue quickly got word there had been confusion in the Lawrence household and called and spent 45 minutes on the phone with Kathy. She told him she thought Stanford could open more doors for her son.

“He told me that’s a lot of hogwash,” she said, laughing. “He believes that he can get the same doors open for him at UCLA that he could at the other schools.”

After a day filled with phone calls from coaches, recruiters and reporters, Lawrence finally made it official. It would be UCLA.

So that was that. Teddy Lawrence had made his decision and he had no regrets. In the end, UCLA was where he felt most comfortable, where there were guys who have the same interests as he does and who hang out together like a team.

“I just didn’t think I fit in at Stanford,” he said. “There weren’t enough guys up there like me. It was like they were from a different world.”

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