Mulligan’s New Slice of Life

You arrive for your interview with Bill Mulligan at the appointed place, his new place of employment, tucked away in a mini-mall not far from the UC Irvine campus.

You step inside and notice two video games pushed against a wall. Neo Geo and Streetfighter II. Straight ahead is a stainless steel counter, a cash register and a pizza oven. All around are molded red plastic chairs and small white tables.

Mulligan wears a white golf shirt bearing a logo, the Rubino’s Restaurant coat of arms, which features a cartoon waiter holding a hot pizza aloft and four words on a scripted scroll: Salads, Secret Recipe and Sandwiches.

“You want something to drink?” Mulligan asks.

“How about some pizza?”

“One slice, or two?”

You ask Mulligan what in the world he’s doing and he’ll tell you. “Running the cash register. Waiting on people. Taking orders.” This is no joke, no publicity stunt. This is what Mulligan does--20 hours a week, decent wages, flexible scheduling--and he’s been doing it for the past four weeks.

Life after basketball was never going to be a piece of cake for Mulligan. Anybody who knew Mulligan knew that.

But a piece of pepperoni, extra cheese?

“I didn’t want to continue to do nothing,” says Mulligan as he takes a seat, having just punched out after a three-hour shift. “I was really getting bored.

“Joe Rubino and I have been friends for years--he’s a big-time Irvine booster--so I told him one day, ‘You know, I’d like to get to know the pizza business.’ And Joe says, ‘Come on.’ He’s got a couple of stores, another one in Newport, and he has me working at both of them.”

Sometimes, both in the same day. Thursday was one such occasion. Day shift in Irvine, night shift in Newport.

“I like it,” Mulligan says. “People who come in here and recognize me always ask me that. ‘You like doing this?’ And I tell them, ‘Yeah.’ I would have preferred doing TV (basketball commentary) or scouting for the NBA guys, but, yeah, I’m having fun here.

“I think some people feel sorry for me. ‘Poor guy, he’s working in a pizza place.’ But my mom used to run a store in Chicago, a little mom-and-pop place, so this is nothing new to me. The cash register is a little more complicated . . .

“But I like being with people, talking with people. I like being around Joe. I like not having to start work until 11. And I like the fact that when you’re done, you’re done. You go home and you don’t worry about it.”

Mulligan says he began waiting at Rubino’s because he got tired of waiting. Waiting for the Big West Conference to decide on the broadcasting team for its SportsChannel cablecasts this season. Waiting for Bray Cary of Creative Sports Marketing to get back to him, following up the encouraging letter he mailed Mulligan in March. Waiting for the broadcast training session Cary had promised him, the first step to the seat behind the microphone.

“He never got back to me,” Mulligan says, his disappointment laced with incredulity. “I talked with one of the executives at SportsChannel and he told me, ‘You’ve got a good TV presence.’

“Good TV presence? Look, I know basketball. I was the senior coach in the Big West, with 11 years in. The only guy close is Tark, with nine. So what the . . . is this? I had a lot of people tell me I’d be a natural for TV. I can’t believe the Big West would tell somebody they’re going to do something for you, and then not do it.”

Mulligan did get an offer from Gary McKnight, the Mater Dei High basketball coach, to broadcast four of his team’s games this season. Mulligan accepted. “They’re on TV,” Mulligan says. “I don’t know what channel. Some kind of Catholic TV. I know I’m getting paid for it.”

Mulligan also toyed with a flyer from an old friend, Jack Teele, the former Ram and San Diego Charger executive who now operates a franchise in the World League of American Football. Picture this: Bill Mulligan, general manager of the Barcelona Dragons.

“I even took a Spanish class,” Mulligan says. “I was the only guy in the room who didn’t know any Spanish at all. Everybody else had a pretty good grasp of it, so I said, ‘What the hell am I doing in here?’ and I dropped out.”

Football? No problema , Mulligan claims.

“I coached three years of football at (Long Beach) Poly,” he says. “In 1963, we won ‘em all except for one tie. I had Gene Washington at quarterback. I had Earl McCullough at running back. I said, ‘Boy, this is really easy.’ ”

Mulligan told Teele no because it would have meant spending five months apart from his wife and family. Five months in Orlando is one thing; five months in Barcelona is another. “If it had been a city in the U.S.,” he says, “I’d have jumped at it.”

So Mulligan stayed in his home in University Hills, just south of the UC Irvine campus, seeking the proper way to stay in touch with the basketball program. This has kept him busy. He doesn’t want to get too close--it’s Rod Baker’s team now and “I feel I shouldn’t be around there.” Too distant isn’t the answer, either. “I miss some of the players.”

Mulligan tackled this dilemma at Irvine’s home opener last week by sitting in the very last row at the Bren Center, far from the mulling crowd. “I had seats down lower, but I figure if I go down there, it’s going to be, ‘There’s Mulligan, there’s Mulligan,’ ” he says. “I wasn’t really hiding up there; I just didn’t want to draw any comparisons. There’s been too many already.”

Pizza is simpler. Take the order, ring up the order, deliver the order. Pizza never second-guesses, never boos, never asks you why you can’t coach defense.

Joe Rubino says Mulligan has been good for business--and when’s the last time the guy behind the counter at Shakey’s got asked for his autograph? It happens at Rubino’s, which Mulligan won’t deny but does attempt to downplay.

“The only thing that’s going to bring people in is if the pizza is good,” Mulligan says.

And Mulligan wants you to know that it is.

“Rick Majerus says it’s as good a pizza place as he’s been to,” he says, alluding to the University of Utah’s coaching heavyweight. “I figure he’s got to be the expert.”