Ultimately, He Doesn’t Quit on His Talent : UCLA: Isaia, a 310-pound defensive lineman, overcomes pain of injury as he works his way back to the top.

Emotions have waged a war over Sale Isaia’s soul--anxiety, resignation, disappointment, pleasure, fear, euphoria, confusion--seemingly everything but satisfaction in a season of discontent in what almost wasn’t a season for him at all.

He had quit on school, and on football at UCLA, where he was a starting nose guard last season and had expected to be this season. He had quit on friends, who didn’t understand that a physically mature man, a 310-pounder standing 6 feet 4, could have the problems of a 21-year-old trying to become an adult. He had quit on himself, too.

It was summer, and his back still hurt from an operation in January.

His problems were rooted there, where the pounding of a season had a disk bulging against a nerve and pain had spread to his legs. But the personal turmoil had grown in all directions.

“It had hurt so bad, I knew I had to get an operation,” he said. “But I had had an operation before on my knee . . . in the summer of ‘90, so I was hesitant. I wasn’t ready for another operation, and in my mind I didn’t want to have one. I was scared.”

He wasn’t alone in his fear.

“My mother didn’t want me to play anymore,” Isaia said. “She asked me not to play. It was emotionally difficult to tell my mom I wanted to have an operation so I could play football again, because my mother and father are everything. I owe my life to them.”

Now it was July and the pain remained. He was in summer school, at first trying to build his grade-point average, but why bother if he couldn’t play football because his back hurt? Why go to class if he couldn’t run and lift weights to prepare himself for a season?

Why?

“I just let it get to me,” he said. “I kept it inside. All of my feelings stay inside. It’s hard for me to express myself, to explain how I really feel. I tend to build a wall around myself. Some of it’s me, and I guess, some of it’s being Samoan.”

Sale Isaia Sr. had a message, father to son: “You started this. You finish it.”

Isaia took his problems to Kennedy Pola, a UCLA graduate assistant who is also Samoan.

“I think of him as a little brother,” Pola said.

They talked of options, of red-shirting, of playing or of quitting. You have to deal with Wayne Nunnely, the new defensive line coach who had replaced Jacob Burney, Pola said.

“You have to be ready to answer this question: ‘Sale, am I going to be able to count on you?’ ” Pola told Isaia.

“ ‘You messed around, and you’re academically ineligible. Second, when you came back from injury, you came back out of shape. So are you ready to do what it takes?’ Now, what’s going to be your response to that?”

The questions were similar to Nunnely’s, and Nunnely was prepared to go with what he had, including a 245-pound nose guard, George Kase, who was eager and effective.

Isaia didn’t seem to have the self-discipline to play college football, his exploits in 1992 notwithstanding?

“The kid has a tremendous talent,” Pola said of Isaia. “He’s a strong kid. He’s a 300-pounder who can move, and the only person who can hold Sale back is Sale.”

First, there was the problem of regaining eligibility. A history class was taken in the second session of summer school, and the pressure to pass it was heavy. No pass, no play.

He took the final examination after UCLA had lost to California, with Isaia standing on the sideline in street clothes. That brought more pressure from the close-knit Samoan community of Oceanside, Isaia’s home. He hadn’t been on the field. He wasn’t playing. Why not?

“One day after that my mom called and she was crying,” Isaia said. “She hadn’t heard from me, and people were asking if I was still on the team. I had to tell her, ‘Yes, I was.’ ”

Sort of. He was declared eligible the day before the Nebraska game, then played only one down. No longer a nose guard, because freshman Travis Kirschke had showed he could back up Kase, Isaia moved to defensive tackle.

“I had been the man the year before, and now I was third string,” he said. “I’ve never been third string in anything.”

He played only four downs against Stanford. Then London Woodfin was injured and Isaia moved up to second string, behind Grady Stretz. On a Thursday in a San Diego hotel, a few hours before the Bruins were to play San Diego State, Nunnely told him there was going to be an opportunity to play.

Isaia played plenty and, Saturday against Brigham Young, he began to show what many had suspected all along.

“I realized I could still reach my goals,” Isaia said. “I wanted to prove that I could play at this level, that I could get a starting job. And I wanted to graduate.”

They are now realistic goals.