McNown Picks Up the Trail : College football: UCLA freshman quarterback fulfills a certain destiny with start against Oregon.

When quarterback Cade McNown was passing over and running through opponents on the high school football fields of Oregon, he was flooded with letters from recruiters.

He remembers one in particular that amused him. It was from USC.

It began, “Dear Tom:”

McNown crumpled it up and threw it away.

“I don’t like these guys,” he said.

With a sentiment like that, he was on his way to becoming a UCLA Bruin.

Since the day he was born, McNown seems to have been on his way toward Saturday. He will start against Oregon in the Bruins’ Pacific 10 Conference opener at the Rose Bowl only six weeks after arriving in Westwood as a freshman.

His mother, Vicki, loved the novel “Gone With the Wind.” When her son was born, she named him after a Confederate soldier in the book named Cade.

“It was such a strong name,” she said.

He showed that strength in athletics, in everything from pole vaulting to skiing. But football was his first love.

When his brother, Jeff, played quarterback in junior college, Cade went out one day to help him with his passing.

Jeff had Cade run 12- to 15-yard patterns. After catching the ball, Cade would fire it back.

“He threw it back better than I threw it to him,” Jeff said.

Cade was in the ninth grade.

“He’s always seemed older than his age,” his mother said. “He always puts carrots in front of his face to motivate himself. If it was skiing, he was always looking for a harder run. If it was golf, he was always looking for a better score.”

Jeff agreed.

“He was always ready for the next level,” Jeff said. “When he was a freshman in high school, he could have started for us at the junior college level.”

Such maturity has been invaluable to McNown, who is in a spot few have ever been in and fewer still have excelled at.

There have been freshman quarterbacks before, but he had to run the offense before he even had a chance to learn it.

When UCLA starting quarterback Ryan Fien pulled a thigh muscle, McNown took over the team in an intrasquad scrimmage on the first day he stepped into the Rose Bowl.

When Fien was briefly sidelined in the season opener because of a concussion and a cut chin, McNown, seemingly unfazed by facing Miami in front of 60,091 people, completed both passes he attempted.

When Fien was knocked out of last Saturday’s game against Brigham Young at Provo, Utah, in the first quarter with another concussion, McNown played the rest of the way in a 23-9 victory, completing nine of 18 passes for 91 yards, rushing for 36 yards, leading the team to a field goal in his first two-minute drill and even throwing a key block on the Cougars’ middle linebacker on a reverse by Derek Ayers that went for a touchdown.

Now, with Fien sidelined for at least a week and perhaps longer, McNown finds himself starting Saturday against the defending conference champions, a team from the state in which McNown was born and in which he played his senior year of prep ball at West Linn High.

McNown is unique not only as a freshman quarterback but the first left-hander to play that position for the Bruins since Ernie Case in 1946.

A runner as much as a passer, McNown seems to feel most comfortable rolling out or running the option.

All this from an 18-year-old who has yet to attend his first class in Westwood.

As befits a true freshman, he’s still getting drinks for older players.

“That’s the way it should be,” McNown said. “I have to take it when they tell me to run and get them a drink. But it’s different when you step onto the field. When we get in the huddle, they have to be quiet.”

He receives no argument from the players.

“He’s our man,” said senior Kevin Jordan, a receiver now in his fifth year at Westwood. “When he comes into the huddle, he’s got that spark in him. He’s real calm. He acts like a senior.”

No one identifies with McNown more than Tom Ramsey, who now covers the Bruins from the broadcast booth but started the last two games of his freshman year at UCLA in the 1979 season.

“Whenever you jump up a level,” Ramsey said, “it’s pretty amazing how fast the guys seem out there. You feel the rate of acceleration, the rate at which things happen. It can be mind-boggling. Guys have to make split-second decisions. You can speed things up as much as you want in practice, but it’s still not what you’re going to get on game day. Guys seem to come at you like they’ve been shot out of a cannon.”

“It’s pretty amazing,” Ramsey said. “He’s a wide-eyed kid who has the attributes, and he’s a bright kid who has adapted quickly to learn the system. Whatever coaches he has had have obviously given him a good fundamental base.”

And who knows? If he should somehow find a way to beat Oregon, McNown might even receive the ultimate compliment--a senior player bringing him a drink.