USC VS. UCLA: REGAINED PRIDE, OR ADDED GLORY? : A Chosen Image : UCLA’s Donahue Decided That Team Should Have High Profile, Not Him

Terry Donahue took his usual perch on a metal folding chair, sitting on the backrest with his feet on the seat. He even looked comfortable.

A few moments before, Donahue had won for the 123rd time in his career as football coach at UCLA, where in 16 years on the job you tend to develop certain habits, such as how to keep your balance when sitting precariously on the back of a folding chair, or when coaching, or when being reviled by critics.

Donahue is doused with diet cola by his players after victories, not because he likes to wear diet cola, but because it has become a habit.

Over the years, other of Donahue’s habits have emerged at UCLA--winning most games, losing some others, winning bowl games, surviving a couple of losing seasons, developing a public image that probably is not him at all and somehow managing to sail through it all pretty much unscathed.

The eerie part is, he looks almost exactly like he did in 1976, when he became the coach at UCLA. He is the Dick Clark of college football.

But here is something even more remarkable: Terry Donahue isn’t who we think he is. The Donahue we think we see? It’s all an act.

“Somewhere along my career, I made a business decision that in order to survive a long time in L.A., it was better to be non-controversial than controversial,” Donahue said.

“That’s low-key. I made a decision that I wasn’t going to be a guy who made a lot of outlandish statements, I wasn’t going to be a guy who wore a lot of wild clothes. Everything I say on the record is strictly business. Avoid controversy at every turn.

“To project longevity in the job, it was better to be low-key, low-profile, less flamboyant and your chances of surviving longer were better,” he said. “That was the calculation I made. I thought it was right. I still think it’s right.”

As Donahue would say, “Hey, what the heck.” He’s still here.

But for someone so low-key, he has an uncanny ability to provoke intense reactions, both negative and positive, depending almost entirely on what happened the previous Saturday.

At this stage in his career, Donahue is the true representation of UCLA athletics in cleats. He also might be the most successful coach in America with so many vocal detractors.

Says ardent supporter Pete Dalis, UCLA’s athletic director: “The only way to make some of our fans happy is to go 11-0 and fire the coach.”

There was no search committee for a new coach at UCLA when Dick Vermeil left. Actually, there was a committee of one--Athletic Director J.D. Morgan. On April 12, 1976, Donahue, at the tender age of 31, became UCLA’s 14th football coach. He didn’t really look the part. With his hair fashionably cut semi-long, he looked more like one of the Bee Gees than the coach of a major college football team.

But much as good grooming was part of the reason he got the job--Donahue learned under Tommy Prothro, Pepper Rodgers and Vermeil--it continues to be an important aspect of the Donahue persona.

It has also become part of his coaching philosophy: No beards, earrings or bandannas under the helmets. Receiver Sean LaChapelle is one of several Bruins who wear earrings, but not during games. Donahue’s fashion sense obviously contrasts with that espoused by Houston Coach John Jenkins and explained by Cougar junior wide receiver Torrin Polk: “He treats us all like men. . . . He lets us wear earrings.”

Donahue might have done a selling job on Morgan--”I convinced him he might be able to hire someone older or more experienced, but he wouldn’t be able to hire anybody that would stay at the university and build a program like I would”--but Donahue also knew that UCLA needed to move swiftly.

The address of UCLA’s football coach seemed to be the front seat of a moving van. Prothro, Rodgers, Vermeil, all were gone in a span of six years and UCLA’s football program clearly lacked stability. Donahue also knew that the job had opened up only 10 days before the letter-of-intent signing date, which meant that unless Morgan acted quickly, UCLA could write off the entire recruiting season.

So Donahue moved into Vermeil’s office, which had been Rodgers’ office, which had been Prothro’s office.

One of the first things he noticed was that he could no longer act like an assistant coach, and he missed that.

“I relished the relationship I used to have with players and as head coach, you lose that,” Donahue said. “They don’t look at you the same and you don’t have the time you had as an assistant. I wanted to be an assistant coach with a head coach title, and I couldn’t.

“No one is born a head coach and there is no book to read. I’m not sure anybody’s prepared, whether you’re 40, 45 or 31. But certainly at 31, you’re vulnerable.”

Donahue started with a bang, a 28-10 victory over Arizona State, which had been ranked No. 2 in the preseason ratings. The Bruins finished 9-2-1, losing only to USC and to Alabama in the Liberty Bowl.

And success continued. In fact, Donahue seemed to do little wrong--except losing to USC four consecutive times--running a veer offense. Then, in 1979, the Bruins went 5-6, the offenseveered off the road and Donahue heard from his critics for the first time.

And what were they saying? That’s right: Too conservative.

“I didn’t know a lot about the throwing game,” he said. “My background had been in option football and I knew a lot about option football. But as we continued not to beat SC, it always came down to the same thing--we couldn’t throw the football.

“So after a while, the criticism got loud enough and strong enough and I just felt like we had to make a philosophical change. Almost overnight, the defenses adjusted and the veer offense almost became like a dinosaur.”

Donahue’s solution was to bring Homer Smith, one of the most respected offensive coaches in football, back to UCLA. Now in his third term on the Bruins’ coaching staff, Smith had worked with Donahue as an assistant under Rodgers in the wishbone.

What Donahue came up with, and trusted Smith to make work, was a balanced offense.

“To this day, we’ve continued with that philosophy (of balance),” said Donahue, who nevertheless discovered that a reputation is a hard thing to change. “Consequently, I got labeled as a conservative guy.”

The tag has endured and Donahue is sensitive to it, perhaps overly so. Yet he seems to understand that in his job, business decisions are analyzed in public.

A case in point is the Bruins’ 27-24 come-from-ahead loss to Cal Oct. 5, after which Donahue was promptly fitted, once again, for a conservative gray suit by some UCLA followers.

“The avalanche came at me,” Donahue said.

UCLA followers had some serious questions:

--What was UCLA doing in the Cal game?

--What was third-string fullback Maury Toy doing when he fumbled?

--What was all the conservative play-calling in the second half?

Paraphrasing Donahue, the answers, in order, were: losing, fumbling, and, what conservative play-calling?

That defeat, though, brought Donahue-bashers out of the woodwork. The Times got more letters about Donahue and that loss than about the Dodgers crashing out of the National League West division race.

There were some classics:

--”It seems to be the coach was more concerned about his appearance by changing to a fresh shirt for the second half than he was in giving the team . . . halftime adjustments. . . . “

--”There are just 2 1/2 words I’d like to say to Terry Donahue: ‘You’re fired.’ ”

Donahue wasn’t alone, though. Dalis caught some flak, too: “Chancellor (Charles) Young should get the Bruin kicking game going by booting Dalis. . . . “

In Dalis’ eight years as athletic director, UCLA has won 19 NCAA titles, but he knows letter-writers sometimes have short memories. Dalis reads a lot, not only what he sees in letters to the newspaper, but in some of the mail on Donahue that crosses his desk.

“My biggest objection to the letters I get is that they’re not educationed, they’re opinionated,” Dalis said.

Donahue insisted he is not all that thin-skinned after all.

“Anybody who is in a play-calling position is open to second-guessing, is open to criticism,” he said. “People would say that we shouldn’t have given the ball to Maury Toy and, in hindsight, that’s 100% right. We shouldn’t have, because he fumbled. People say we shouldn’t have thrown on third and two (actually, third and three) . . . we get nailed for being conservative, but we throw on third and two. There’s a real inconsistency there.”

Many remain unconvinced. An unbalanced offense led by unbalanced men, they sniff. What’s more, they call into question Smith’s reputation as resident offensive genius.

But Donahue says the mission remains the same.

“Philosophically, if we could wind up with 250 yards rushing, 250 yards passing and one more point than the other guy, I think Homer would be happy as a clam, and so would I,” Donahue said.

“I think Homer is working hard to establish a running game, I want the offense to have a good running game, I really believe the better we run the ball, the better (quarterback) Tommy Maddox will play. I think Homer is in total concert with that philosophy.”

Smith has an economics degree from Princeton, a master’s in business administration from Stanford and a master’s in theological studies from Harvard. He talks of “option control” and “unrealized potential” before settling into a discourse of this year’s Bruin offense. The Bruins are committed to a liberal offense, not one with a conservative leaning, Smith said.

“We just haven’t been able to play our game yet,” he said when asked if this has been a difficult season for him.

“We thought we might have been able to get it (going against Oregon), but we failed to hook up on some passes to get started right. But you put Paul Richardson with Sean LaChapelle and Michael Moore and Kevin Williams with Tommy (Maddox) and a line that’s just learning . . . we’re still in the future.”

That would be nice for the Bruins, to whom the recent past hasn’t been too kind. Records of 3-7-1 in 1989 and 5-6 in 1990 brought the anti-Donahue forces together. They invoked the sacred name of Prothro, but he had his 3-7 season, too, in 1968.

What those losing seasons cost the Bruins was at least as tangible as Donahue’s reputation. Since the 1989 football season, UCLA has experienced a 23% drop in full-price season ticket sales, from 26,726 to 20,786. Based on an average of $125 a ticket, UCLA has lost nearly $750,000 in season ticket revenue.

“The data there is a direct result of our not being as successful on the field as we had been before,” said Steve Salm, associate athletic director for business and finance.

Losing games has also cost the Bruins several appearances on ABC, which bring in about $150,000 per game, depending on the number of times they play on television each season.

Dalis said an unexpected turnover in the assistant coaching staff added to the problems on the field. In 1989, three new assistant coaches were hired. In 1990, five more new coaches were hired and the three who had arrived the previous year were gone.

Losing took its toll on Donahue, although Dalis is convinced that Donahue turned a negative around and used it as a learning experience.

“Privately, with me, he mellowed, contrary to what the public perceives him to be like,” Dalis said. “I certainly think it was a growth period for him. He appears to be much more in control of his leadership and that might be a result of 3-7-1 and 5-6. There is definitely a difference between the private Terry Donahue and the public Terry Donahue.”

The private life of Donahue is far from the Rose Bowl and revolves around his family, his wife, Andrea, and daughters Nicole Denise, Michele Lynn and Jennifer Erin in Westlake Village, a 75-minute drive from Westwood.

Angelo Mazzone has known Donahue for 21 years and has helped him with his financial planning. Mazzone said Donahue is exactly the same person he met as a football manager at UCLA in 1970, but maybe not the man the general public perceives.

“He’s a family man who is not interested in all the glamour that he has as a coach,” Mazzone said. “I think Terry could have used his position to really make out for himself, but he never has. He’s not willing to give up what little time he has left over from coaching for a lot of public speaking or clinics.”

Donahue made sure that Andrea’s name was included when they donated $75,000 to endow a UCLA football scholarship.

So as Donahue prepares to run onto the field on another football Saturday, another showdown against USC, he vows he will carry no excess emotional baggage with him. He won’t carry a winning record vs. the Trojans, either, at 5-9-1, but throw out that 0-4 start and he is even.

“At this stage, I know who I am,” Donahue said. “I’m not secure with my football program right now--I’m very insecure why we plummeted so far and so fast--but I’m very secure (about) where I am and who I am.”

“I think in many ways , football’s a young man’s game . . . . I don’t know if I’m suffering from the early symptoms of burnout or not. At times I certainly feel like I might be a candidate for the disease.”

--Terry Donahue, 41, in 1985

He sure doesn’t look like a candidate for burnout. The only coach to have won a bowl game in seven consecutive seasons, Donahue has won more games than any other coach in Pac-10 history except Washington’s Don James. In winning percentage before this season, he ranked eighth among active Division I coaches who have at least five seasons.His UCLA teams have won four Pac-10 titles, finished second six times, won at least nine games seven times and have had 12 winning seasons.

Donahue’s record is 123-54-8, a .687 winning percentage, and if that’s not flashy, then why does he go out of his way to low-key it all the time?

For instance, UCLA was favored by 26 1/2 points over winless Oregon State and Donahue made it sound to reporters as if the Beavers were a threat: “I don’t think OSU is the Sisters of the Poor, I really don’t. They’ve got some good players running around. People have already cast the die on the game. It’s already been played and won. But you all don’t believe it, and I’m going to have a hard time.”

For the record, the reporters were right--UCLA won, 44-7.

But then, two years earlier, under similar circumstances, Donahue said all of those same things. And Oregon State won, 18-17.

It wouldn’t be right to categorize Donahue as a pessimist, but there is definitely a tendency that way. It simply seems difficult for Donahue to put himself and his team in the position of the favorite, so his approach to motivating comes from another direction.

Matt Stevens, who quarterbacked the Bruins to the Freedom Bowl in 1987 as a fifth-year senior, works at Century Thrift and Loan in real estate finance.

“Make no mistake about it, Coach Donahue is a great coach,” Stevens said. “All I can say about him is I am lucky he was my coach. When I was there, we went to three Rose Bowls, the Fiesta Bowl and the Freedom Bowl and we won them all.

“He is a great man in my opinion. He is a man’s man, sit down drink a beer with you, but Coach Donahue needs to be more like himself--I don’t like it when he worries. I like him to say, ‘Go out there and kick some butt.’ That’s how he really feels.”

In the book “60 Years of USC-UCLA Football” by Steve Springer and Michael Arkush, a story along the same lines was told by former UCLA quarterback Tom Ramsey about the 1982 season. Trailing Michigan at halftime, 21-0, Donahue got angry when Michigan Coach Bo Schembechler apparently taunted him on the way to the locker room.

“He was screaming and yelling and throwing things in the locker room,” Ramsey said. “He gave one of the most inspiring halftime speeches ever. It rattled our cages.”

UCLA came back to win, 31-27.

“What used to drive me nuts was that we had a great team in 1982 and Donahue goes, ‘We have a nice team.’ ” Ramsey said. “A lot of players used to talk among ourselves and say, ‘We have a nice team? What the hell is this?’ We were a bunch of mean, crazy guys. That used to drive guys up the wall.”

Another former quarterback who led UCLA to a bowl game remembers Donahue telling them they could lose to San Diego State.

“Lose? We thought we’d win by 40 points,” the player said. “We just talked about where the party was after the game.”

Donahue says he actually mixes his messages, depending on the situation. He said he keeps the underdog role on a leash.

“I use it sometimes,” Donahue said. “I used it against Washington last year. You use it when it’s appropriate. Other times you talk about, ‘Hey, we’re going to dominate the game physically, we’re better than this team physically, we’re going to make them find out they can’t play with UCLA,’ so you play whatever kind of the street you walk down.

“Everybody says I’m more comfortable playing the underdog, so I must be. I’m not defensive about it. I’ve read that many times: I prefer to be the underdog. There is probably a psychological side to me that says I prefer to be the underdog. But there is also a logical side to me that would prefer to be the favorite, because I know the oddsmakers more times than not are correct.”

Donahue acknowledged that he probably motivates the way he does because of his own experience as an unrecruited 170-pound linebacker from Notre Dame High in Sherman Oaks . . . a walk-on at San Jose State . . . a stint in the weight-room at Valley College . . . a walk-on, 190-pound lineman at UCLA.

“I’m an overachiever and always have been, probably in everything I do,” Donahue said.”I think the President’s probably an overachiever, too. Hey, what the heck. I don’t hide from the fact.”

This is one self-admitted overachiever who has achieved a great deal. Maybe not enough to suit everybody, but if he is so conservative, why does he wear bright gold sweaters? And his favorite color is not beige. It’s blue.

He is criticized in the letters to the newspaper for his losses, but he wins lots more than he loses. And through it all, Donahue does indeed sound as if he has mellowed, even if on the outside he doesn’t look as though he has changed one bit since his Bee Gees period.

But he has changed.

“You become hardened,” he said. “You get to a point where you’ve run the gamut. You’ve seen the letters to the editor and on the other hand you’ve had nice things written about you. And in the end, I’m not sure it matters very much. In the end, you basically get down to saying, ‘Hey, I did the best I could.’ Eventually, history will judge me. Not all of it will be perfect, but it won’t be from not trying.”