Spontaneous Receiver : LaChapelle Decided to Keep His Comedy Act at UCLA Minutes Before He Was Going to Announce His Leaving, and Now the Joke Is on Bruin Foes

UCLA wide receiver Sean LaChapelle and his brother Dean were bored working in their uncle’s shop a couple of summers ago when Dean came up with an idea.

“Sean, let’s brand ourselves,” Dean said.

Sean was puzzled.

“You know, brand ourselves with our family initials like they brand cattle,” Dean said.

Dean fashioned the initials LA out of welding torch wire and then heated it with a torch. Dean went first, but Sean almost chickened out after seeing the look of pain flash across his brother’s face.

But Sean went through with it, putting the brand on his left forearm.

“It was like a bonding thing,” LaChapelle said. “I love to do things spontaneously, and this was real spontaneous.”

As impulsive as Bart Simpson, LaChapelle might have renounced his final season of eligibility at UCLA and made himself eligible for the NFL draft if not for his spontaneous nature.

“I was this close to leaving,” LaChapelle said, holding his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “It was the biggest decision of my life. But when I look back at it now, I’m glad that I stayed. If I’d left I probably would have been drafted in the second round, but if the Bruins have a good season, hopefully, I’ll get drafted in the first round. Last year, I don’t think that would have happened.”

Only 15 minutes before he was scheduled to announce at a news conference that he would forgo his senior season, along with quarterback Tommy Maddox, LaChapelle changed his mind.

He might not have if the news conference hadn’t been delayed 30 minutes because Maddox was late.

LaChapelle had met with UCLA Coach Terry Donahue minutes before when La Chapelle encountered Rick Neuheisel, UCLA assistant. Although LaChapelle feared he wouldn’t be as productive this season without Maddox, Neuheisel persuaded him that Bruin coaches would develop a productive replacement for Maddox.

“Out of all the people here at UCLA, I value (Neuheisel’s) opinion most highly,” LaChapelle said. “We’ve established a quality friendship. And it’s not just a player-coach type of friendship, it’s two guys. He doesn’t treat me like a little kid, he treats me like I’m a 22-year-old.

“When I came out of Donahue’s office Rick was standing there and he looked at me like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I turned around and closed the door and started thinking what I was going to say to Rick. I opened the door and he was still standing there.”

The clincher came when Neuheisel, who had turned down an opportunity to pursue a legal career after LaChapelle asked him to stay at UCLA, reminded LaChapelle that he had made a deal.

“I just spelled out the pros and cons of leaving early,” Neuheisel said. “I also pointed out that he’d made a commitment to UCLA, as well as to his parents, that he was going to finish his education.

“But I think the major factor was I just begged him,” Neuheisel said with a laugh.

Donahue, who had spent the previous night trying to persuade him to remain at UCLA, was skeptical when LaChapelle told him he wasn’t leaving.

“Don’t pull one of your jokes on me,” Donahue told LaChapelle.

LaChapelle extended his hand, which was shaking and said, “Coach, let’s shake on it before I change my mind again.”

If LaChapelle had been playing a practical joke on Donahue, it wouldn’t have been the first time.

When LaChapelle was a freshman, he startled Donahue by jumping onto his back from behind for a ride as Donahue emerged from a darkened film room. LaChapelle explained that he didn’t think that was unusual.

“My little childish antics are because of the way I used to act in high school,” in Napa, Calif., LaChapelle said. “We used to wrestle with our coaches all the time in high school.

“At first Donahue was kind of startled because he didn’t know who it was, but then he realized it was me and told me not to ever do that again. By the way he said it, I knew that you don’t do those things to college head coaches.

LaChapelle says he is “constantly trying” to irritate Donahue: “Not in the sense that he’ll get mad at me and bench me, because as an athlete you have to understand that you can’t really get on the wrong side of your head coach.”

LaChapelle got on the wrong side of Donahue the first time he touched the ball at UCLA by ignoring instructions to call for a fair catch of a punt during the Bruins’ 1990 season-opener against Oklahoma. LaChapelle fumbled at the six-yard line to set up a touchdown during the Sooners’ 34-14 victory.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” LaChapelle said. “I wanted to impress the coach so bad, and I thought I could break a touchdown. But I should have conformed.”

Donahue takes LaChapelle’s antics in stride.

“I’m not surprised at anything he says or does,” Donahue said. “Sean is real playful. He particularly likes to give me a lot of grief and see if he can get me stirred up. But I like being around him, and I like the way he plays.

“He’s a loose cannon. He’s unconventional. But the one thing a lot of people don’t understand about Sean is that when he’s on the field, he’s a tremendous example to young players. People think he’s real independent, but on the field he’s not.

“Some guys are great game players, but really don’t practice and give young players a idea of what it’s supposed to be like. But Sean practices and plays at about the same tempo, and to me that’s unusual for a star player.”

In the regimented world of UCLA football, LaChapelle remains an individual off the field.

“He’s out there,” UCLA defensive tackle Matt Werner said of LaChapelle. “He’s just out there to have fun.”

After a TV special convinced him that Elvis Presley isn’t dead, LaChapelle’s standard greeting to his teammates is: “Elvis Lives.”

Although team rules forbid earrings, LaChapelle occasionally wears two in his left ear to team meals. He also has drawn Donahue’s ire by wearing his shorts inside out at practice.

Superstitious, LaChapelle wears a black rubber bracelet on his right wrist for good luck. His pregame ritual is to stand alone on the sideline and hold the bracelet.

“Life is too short to always be serious,” LaChapelle said. “If you don’t laugh, the joys of life go by. The older you get, the fewer things you can do. Everyone has a little kid inside them, but some people get too serious about life and put that little kid in the closet and they die not being happy. That’s why I’m constantly trying to make people laugh.”

UCLA offensive coordinator Homer Smith believed LaChapelle was playing a practical joke when he showed up at an informal practice before the start of last season with his left shin bandaged and said he had been shot.

But it was no joke.

LaChapelle and Werner were hunting rabbits near LaChapelle’s father’s home in suburban Sacramento when LaChapelle shot himself as he was adjusting a 22-caliber pistol.

“Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt at all,” LaChapelle said. “I never really felt the bullet. I must have had an angel on my shoulder that day.”

LaChapelle was lucky because the bullet ricocheted off his shin bone and traveled two inches before exiting.

“Sean was kind of calm, but I was freaking out when I saw him bleeding,” Werner said.

But the injury didn’t hamper LaChapelle last season.

He set single-season school records by catching 73 passes for 1,056 yards and 11 touchdowns. A second-team All-American, he set a school record by catching 11 passes against Arizona State.

Although some receivers are hesitant to run pass routes over the middle because of the danger, LaChapelle specializes in it because of his ability to read coverages.

LaChapelle, who scored on a 51-yard pass play against Oregon State last season, also runs well after catching the ball.

“I’ve always had game speed, because I get scared out on the field,” LaChapelle said. “It’s not scared where I’m a coward, but if I see someone coming at me, I’ll split my body in half not to give them a clean shot. I’ll probably even lose yardage to refuse to let them get a shot.”

After teaming with Maddox to form one of the Pac-10’s most productive passing combinations last season, LaChapelle must adjust to a new quarterback this season--Wayne Cook, a redshirt sophomore who has never thrown a pass in a college game.

Donahue believes LaChapelle and Cook will work well together.

“I would shudder to think what we’d be like right now without Sean LaChapelle,” Donahue said. “He’s a marvelous receiver who will really help Wayne Cook.”

Although his goal is to play in the NFL, LaChapelle also would like to become an actor because “you get to do things you don’t do in real life.”