COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’93 : Three Times the Pressure : Cook, Walker and Fien Waiting for Donahue to Decide on UCLA’s Starting Quarterback

Wayne Cook and Ryan Fien are native Southern Californians. Rob Walker is a Texan and proud of it.

Cook and Walker are the sons of coaches. Fien’s father, Hank, is chief engineer at a hospital.

Cook is a 22-year-old junior, Walker and Fien sophomores.

Fien and Cook thrive on the long pass, Walker on ball control.

Their paths have converged at UCLA, where each wants to be the starting quarterback.

Each started last season, two of them when his predecessor was injured. Each had moments of glory and despair.

They are alike--but, oh, so different.

*

It was Wayne Cook’s time. Tommy Maddox had gone to the NFL early and Cook was the one with experience. Walker was a redshirt freshman and Fien only three months from Simi Valley High.

Cook opened against Cal State Fullerton with a completion to Sean LaChapelle. There was a touchdown pass to J.J. Stokes and, in less than 25 minutes, there were 155 yards passing and a 20-0 lead.

He closed in the second quarter when he was hit by the Titans’ Randy Franklin.

“I knew exactly what it was,” Cook says. “I heard it pop.”

It was his left knee, injured for the second time.

Thus began a period of rehabilitation and soul-searching.

“I thought, ‘I’ve got two more years to play and I can get healthy and have two good seasons,’ ” he says.

But that was not his first thought.

“That first week, I had to think, ‘Why does this happen?’ ” he says. “Then I got through that.”

A leather brace reminds others of how he got to this point. Hours were spent in the training room with trainers working the knee, bending it to break scar tissue and bring back what doctors call range of motion.

“You sit there in pain while they mess with your knee, and then it gets to a point where it doesn’t hurt,” he says. “Then they try something new and that hurts. Everything seems to hurt and I probably swore quite a bit.”

Spring brought light work and another operation, arthroscopy to clean out debris, and summer was spent running and throwing with Walker, Fien and the backs and receivers. Cook, the oldest, was charged with organizing seven-on-seven drills, kind of a player-coach, he says.

The knee is fine, Cook says, so what remains is winning back the job that was handed to him a season ago. Walker and Fien got game experience, and in the spring, practice with the starting unit while Cook healed. He’s still the oldest, though, with more time in the program than the others.

“I’ll tell you the truth, I think it’s my job to lose,” he says. “I have my age, my maturity, my leadership qualities and management of the team that pushes me over the top. We’re all good athletes, and each of us is a bit better in one area than the others. With me it’s arm strength.

“But I want to win the job, and I don’t want people to say I’m starting because I know more. I want people to say I’m starting because I’m better. I want to know that there’s no question I should be the one to play.”

*

You go into Rob Walker’s apartment and you’re in South Fork West. There’s the Lone Star flag in the living room, and the music is Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson and, especially, George Strait.

He’s a deep-in-the-heart Texan who speaks the language of his roots, conversation sprinkled with bromides learned at Coach Pat Walker’s knee.

“My dad taught me physical and mental toughness,” Walker says. “He is from the old school and taught me about laying it all on the line, playing until you can’t walk.”

It’s what Walker did last season. He went in against Fullerton when Cook was hurt and was so nervous that he kept his mouthpiece lodged in the side of his facemask for four plays until somebody noticed and his play-calling came out almost as gibberish.

He got through the game, and, almost excruciatingly, through a Monday news conference at which reporters sought to catch up on a player they knew little about.

Walker then showed his ability, completing 14 of 16 passes in the first half of a victory over Brigham Young, playing the game he had learned in Texas: short throws, ball control.

“I think I showed what I can do in that game,” he says. “I had had a week of practice, and the restrictions were taken off as early as the BYU game. I started to feel more confident against San Diego State. I had a few check-offs (plays changed at the line of scrimmage) and got us into a few better situations.”

The wheels started to come off against Arizona, in a 23-3 defeat. And then came Stanford.

“We went back and looked at the film and I was knocked down 18 of the 24 times I went back to throw through the third quarter,” Walker says. “At the end of the third quarter, one of the defensive linemen jumped over one of our offensive linemen and knocked my knee into the ground with the ankle still sitting there.”

He continued to play.

“We had a chance to win, and I wasn’t going to give that up for the world,” he says.

“But then we turned the ball over a couple of times in the fourth quarter and didn’t convert some third downs. And we were in our end zone and a guy named Ron George, who had my driver’s license and Social Security numbers all day, blindsided me.”

Walker came off the field, playing again only briefly in the season’s next-to-last game, at Oregon.

He had had his moments and now he wants more.

“I’ve always been an underdog,” he says. “Maybe things haven’t worked out the way I would have liked them to, but for an instant I was on top. I was the guy, the pilot of the ship, and everyone was watching me. When you get that, you never want to leave.”

And now he is competing for a job, a better situation than last year, when he knew Cook was the starting quarterback.

“For the most part, I didn’t mind at the time being the second man then,” he says. “But I would mind being the second man now. It would have an effect on me, though I know from last year that anything can happen and I can come in again.

“But I came to UCLA to stay and what happens, happens.”

*

Rob Walker wanted to go to the University of Texas, but the Longhorns didn’t want him. They wanted Ryan Fien of Simi Valley, who visited Austin, liked it and loved the idea that John Mackovic was coming in as coach and had worked with Jeff George and Tony Eason, helping them into the NFL.

But Washington State wanted him, too, and so did Michigan State and UCLA.

“I figured UCLA was established and had what I wanted as a quarterback,” Fien says. “I had gone to SC and UCLA games, as many as 10 games a year, when I was in high school and I admired Maddox and (Troy) Aikman.”

He changed his mind about Texas when Maddox announced that he was going to the NFL. Ahead were Cook and Walker, with more time in the program, but Fien has never lacked confidence. He figured a redshirt year to get comfortable, then watch out.

The redshirt year didn’t come. The Washington State pass rush did.

Senior transfer John Barnes was listed as the starter against the Cougars, but he threw an interception that Ron Childs returned 17 yards for a touchdown and Fien was an instant college quarterback.

“On the third play, I pitched to Kevin Williams and he went (78 yards) for a touchdown,” Fien says.

Then things got hard. He completed only five of 20 passes for 55 yards and threw an interception.

“Really, I was comfortable, but I still hadn’t learned,” he says. “The coaches did the best they could, but instead of just playing football, I was thinking too much about what I was supposed to do.”

The embarrassment was heightened by his opponent.

“When I made my recruiting visit to Washington State, (first NFL draft choice) Drew Bledsoe was my host,” Fien says. “I was in awe. I wanted to be like him, and in my first game, I was playing so badly that I was embarrassed. We had talked on the phone occasionally, and he talked with me after the game and told me don’t worry about it, that it would get better.”

It didn’t. Fien had broken a bone in his left foot before the Washington State game but had told no one.

“It was my shot,” he says. “My first game, it really hurt, but I still wasn’t going to tell anybody. . . . It was the chance I wanted. It could have been great.”

Instead, it’s only a painful memory.

“I still haven’t watched film of that game,” he says.

Nor will he watch the Arizona State game, when the foot hurt too much and was compounded by a hip injury that finished his season. But he had tasted college football and he liked it.

“I had been in awe,” he says. “I mean, I used to pay to watch these guys, and now people were paying to watch me.”

His position is different from those of Walker and Cook, though, because he has more options. He can redshirt, keeping three more seasons of eligibility. Or he can transfer, sit out a season and play three more years. He faces an emotional few days, until the quarterback decision is made.

“It would be real tough to sit, if I redshirted, and watch someone playing my position and know that he has another year left,” Fien says. “But, at the same time, if I redshirted, the next year I’d be with my age group again.

“Still, I think I can do the job this year. Last year, I learned I could play at this level. I could pass and I could see things develop, but I didn’t have the knowledge to do anything about those developments.”

The decision will be difficult, particularly since none of the three has taken charge. Cook and Walker have had nagging injuries, with Fien getting more work in scrimmages.

“Ryan is an aggressive quarterback, which is a nice quality for a quarterback to have,” Coach Terry Donahue says. “But at the same time, with that aggressiveness, he thinks he can throw a ball through a car wash and not get it wet.”

Cook played in the first scrimmage, calling a 70-yard touchdown run on the opening play. He completed six of eight passes for 81 yards, then sat out two series and all of the second scrimmage because of a pulled thigh muscle.

Walker pulled a calf muscle punting and sat out the first scrimmage. He completed 12 of 16 passes for 83 yards and a touchdown in the second.

Fien’s aggregate in the two scrimmages: 14 for 25 for 217 yards and three touchdowns, but with four interceptions.

“You’d love to see one guy take charge, but that hasn’t happened,” Donahue says. “Obviously, it would be easier if it was a clear-cut decision.”

But it isn’t, and Donahue refuses to be held to a timetable for selecting his quarterback to start against Cal on Sept. 4. “It might be Monday, it might be Friday before the game,” he says.

Meanwhile, three quarterbacks throw and wait and remember.