COLLEGE FOOTBALL ’94 / SEASON PREVIEWS : Bad Timing : Rose Bowl Still Haunts UCLA’s Cook, but He Enters Season With Confidence

If he had it to do over again, he would throw the ball into a sousaphone in the UCLA band.

In the 238 days since the final play of the Rose Bowl game, Wayne Cook has thought about it at least 238 times. And wished he could do it again, differently.

Each time, it gets clearer, and maybe more frustrating.

First and 10 on the Wisconsin 18, with 15 seconds to play, no timeouts and the clock running. Cook takes the snap and there is a moment of indecision before he starts to

run, picking up three yards before being hauled down by Mike Thompson. Five, four, three, two, one. Wisconsin 21, UCLA 16.

“I knew I was going to clock it, which means throw the ball into the ground to stop the clock,” he said. “On our clock routes, normally receivers run five-yard outs. But when we are inside the 20, the outs go to fades.”

The Bruins are two steps inside the 20.

“But I’m still thinking clock, outs,” Cook said. “So I go up to the line of scrimmage--and this is all going through my head. Kevin Jordan ran the right route, but when he didn’t do what I thought he was going to do, it was like, ‘Whoa, what just happened?’ Well, he ran a fade and that’s what he was supposed to do.

“I just lost track of where we were on the field, I guess. So I’m trying to make a smart play and get us closer to scoring, and it ended up being a bonehead play because I should have just thrown it over his head and out of bounds. . . . I even know the play I wanted to run next, the perfect play. I wanted to roll right and have J.J. (Stokes) go inside and then back out. Then I could throw the ball back across the field and he could go up and get it. You’ve got 15 yards to go, so why not go to your big guy? I think a lot about stuff like that.”

Now that there’s time to think about it.

“Well, you have to think about this stuff quickly, because you don’t have much time. Then when something happens you don’t expect, you just go on instinct.”

It is the quarterback instinctively becoming a football player and it ended a season that had otherwise gone so right.

A year ago, he was in competition for a job, a battered quarterback with a surgically repaired knee, trying to prove he was better than Ryan Fien and Rob Walker. He got the No. 1 job three days before the opening game, getting the chance to play his first complete football game since his senior season at Newbury Park High, largely because he had more time in the program.

It was the one reason he didn’t want to hear. He wanted the job because he had earned it through his play. He has kept it for just that reason.

By midseason, when UCLA was in the middle of a seven-game winning streak, Coach Terry Donahue was giving Cook credit for the Bruins’ success. This, after trying to shelter him from blame for an 0-2 start, one of the losses having ended in Cook’s throwing an interception against California.

It’s not a case of all’s well ending well, because it didn’t end all that well. But it has ended with Cook coming back to school as the first returning UCLA quarterback starter since Tommy Maddox took his game to the NFL.

It’s a new Cook, bigger at 218 pounds and with a new outlook, no longer having to prove himself after a season in which he completed 165 of 297 passes for 2,067 yards and 18 touchdowns. Twice he threw four touchdown passes in a game. Five touchdowns came from 35 or more yards out. He threw only four interceptions, only three during the regular season, a Pacific 10 record.

It’s a more confident Cook, who has a season of success on his resume, one in which he led UCLA to the Pacific 10 championship after the Bruins were picked by some to finish as low as sixth.

And, he reminds, he’s coming back after a mostly injury-free season.

“I had that kidney problem, but that wasn’t because I was fragile,” he said. “That was because I got killed. I took the kind of shot that would have hurt anybody.”

The shot was delivered in the first quarter against Washington State when DeWayne Patterson jumped off-side and leveled Cook, who came back, tried to play and then went to a hospital. He could not play the next week, against Arizona State, which defeated the Bruins, 9-3.

That tells you how important Cook is to UCLA.

“He took his team to the Rose Bowl,” said offensive coordinator Bob Toledo, who replaced Homer Smith in the job after last season. “When he wasn’t in there, the Bruins got beat.”

When Toledo took the job in February, one of the first things he did was watch film of Cook to see what kind of raw material he was working with. He saw Cook’s two fumbles in the Rose Bowl and said he needed to work on ball protection. He saw Cook get sacked and said he needed to change his footwork. He saw Cook’s 55% completion rate and said that needed improvement.

Then he saw Cook in spring practice.

“He was better than I thought,” Toledo said. “When I saw him on the field, he was better than when I saw him in the film.

“There are things you don’t see on film, like his character, his charisma, the way the kids rally around him. They have confidence in him and his leadership ability.”

The other things could be fixed but you can’t teach leadership. When a couple of defensive players went on a hair-cutting rampage during preseason practice, they started on the freshmen, then went to Cook.

“They said, ‘If you get yours cut, others will follow,’ ” said Cook, who bowed to solidarity--and overwhelming numbers--and ended up with a crew cut. And others followed.

It’s an intangible that takes Cook beyond mere numbers. Stardom comes from statistics. Sometimes victories don’t.

For reference, consult your favorite college football preseason magazine. Nearly all of the Pac-10 starting quarterbacks are back, and seemingly without exception a pecking order is listed. There are Rob Johnson at USC, Steve Stenstrom at Stanford, Danny O’Neil at Oregon and. . . .

“They say ‘solid returning quarterback Wayne Cook,’ ” Cook said. “Solid. Little things like that get under my skin. . . . I don’t want to be just solid, and I don’t think people here think that way. It’s just the way some people put it. They’ll be positive, but they’ll knock you by saying you’re average.

“I think those guys are great quarterbacks. They throw the ball well. But head to head, what happened? My team won. I beat Stenstrom. I beat Johnson. I’m not saying I’m a better quarterback, but I am saying I can compete with them.

“I ended up taking an offense that was much more balanced than theirs were--they all threw the ball more than I did, we ran the ball a lot more--and we beat those teams. People look at stats first, and that’s obviously a lot, but you’ve got to look at other areas too.

“So, look at my last year’s stats, at the touchdown-interception ratio (18 to four) and all that . . . and my offense scored the highest number of points per game (32, with California’s 31.2 next and no other team’s over 26.7), that’s how I compare to those guys.

“They threw for more than 3,000 yards, but I basically missed two games. If I had played those two, I would have probably thrown 200-250 yards in each (which would have brought him close to 2,500).”

Under his stewardship, receiver J.J. Stokes made All-American and Kevin Jordan established himself with 45 catches.

“Some people say anybody could be a success with Stokes as a receiver,” Cook said. “I think that’s wrong. He’s great. He really is. I think he’s the best player in the country, but I had another receiver (Jordan) who was a sophomore All-American.

“Somewhere down the line, you’ve got to look at me and say I’m throwing the ball and hitting the guys in the hands, or else they’re not going to catch it. There has never been a great receiver that did not have a good quarterback. And it works the other way. There haven’t been any great quarterbacks who haven’t had great receivers. Montana had (Jerry) Rice and (John) Taylor. He’s still the best quarterback who ever played the game.”

Bottom line, Cook is the returning quarterback of the Pac-10 champion.

“And I played in the Rose Bowl,” he reminds.

And threw 43 passes, completing 28 for 288 yards and a touchdown against Wisconsin.

The quest is for a repeat performance or better. Cook is a senior but in only his second season as a starter.

“I looked at the press guide, at quarterbacks in their second season, and it seemed like they all got 5% better in passing completion and stuff like that. I want to get up to 60 or 65% completions. I want to throw for more yards. Maybe 25 touchdowns.”

It’s music to Toledo’s ears. He’s bringing the short-passing game to the UCLA offense, with emphasis on throwing to the backs.

“I don’t think his completion rate was as good as it can be,” Toledo said. “I want him in the 60% range. And we’ve got some big-play guys, so we’re going to throw the ball enough so it’s possible that he can throw for 3,000 yards.”

No one has done it at UCLA, where Troy Aikman’s 2,771 yards--and 24 touchdown passes--in 1988 are school records.

UCLA will still seek offensive balance. Donahue still wants Cook handing the ball to a running back as often as possible.

And Cook and Toledo are still trying to work out their own relationship.

“It’s going to be interesting, seeing how the play-calling goes,” Cook said. “But I look at his coming here as a positive thing. I’m learning from him. I was bummed when Coach Smith left because I think he made me into a quarterback. But now I’m getting a new coach, some new ideas and I think that might be better for me in the long run.”

His UCLA career has one more season to run. Then it’s on to other things.

“The NFL used to be a dream for me, but it seems more real now,” Cook said. “You know what’s interesting? I used to watch a preseason game, and after the first two quarters, I didn’t want to watch anymore because it was boring. I didn’t know any of the players. Now I’ve played against a lot of the guys.

“I watched Atlanta-San Diego, and Vaughn Parker (who finished his UCLA career in 1993) was playing almost the whole game. And Perry Klein played quarterback for Atlanta. I played against him when we were younger. And he’s throwing touchdown passes to Bert Emanuel (a former UCLA quarterback who transferred to Rice). I’m saying, ‘I’m as good as Perry Klein, and he’s out there looking pretty good.’ ”

It’s another quarterback comparison. He can’t escape it. Even in his own mind.