Honeymoon in Westwood

Two-a-days. Morning football practice, followed by afternoon practice, followed by meetings, with the body never quite resting, never quite being rejuvenated.

Two-a-days. Welcome respite for Bob Toledo.

They are a welcome break for a man who, since he became UCLA’s coach Jan. 4, has met graduates even the alumni office can’t find, has told jokes, preached the gospel of Bruin football and spread the message.

He likes them.

He also knows what’s coming, beginning Sept. 7 at Knoxville, Tenn.

“They all love me right now,” Toledo said. “I’m unbeaten, untied and unscored upon. They think I’m a great guy, but eventually we’re going to have to play a game, and then we’re going to see things happen. Then they’ll see the product on the field, and then they’ll have an opportunity to evaluate me.

“That’s when we’ll have criticism, because regardless of what you do, if you throw too much, you should run; if you run too much, you should throw. I’m going to be criticized whether we win or lose.”

Toledo, for two years Terry Donahue’s offensive coordinator, knows. He saw it happen to Donahue, who made 20 years of enemies along with 20 years of friends as UCLA’s coach.

He saw it happen at UC Riverside, where he won, but not enough to keep the program afloat. And he saw it happen as a young coach at

Pacific, where he won, but not enough to keep a job.

And at Oregon, where the offense he coordinated set records for a team whose defense couldn’t stop anybody. And at Texas A&M;, where his offense set records, but not against Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl.

He saw and he learned, and beginning today, he is back in the head coaching business, overseeing two-a-days for players beginning them with a bounce in their strides that hasn’t been seen in Westwood in some time.

“I’m looking forward to two-a-days,” said junior running back Skip Hicks, who has played football long enough to know better. “I feel we’ve got more togetherness than we’ve had since I’ve been here. All we care about is winning.”

Safety Abdul McCullough, a fifth-year senior, tempers that slightly.

“I can’t say I’m looking forward to two-a-days,” he said. “But I am looking forward to getting started.

“Coach Toledo has brought the enthusiasm back. As players, we know it takes more than talent to win. Coach Donahue was a legend, and I thank him for bringing me here, but he had been coaching since before I was born and had been head coach here since I was 2. There was something missing, and Coach Toledo is trying to add that missing piece. He’s trying to make it fun.”

Toledo calls it “building on the two schools--he won’t name them--to tell coaches he wouldn’t be taking their offensive coordinator jobs and calling wife Elaine to tell her they wouldn’t have to move again after all.

Then he headed for the nearest Bruin Club meeting with his salary tripled, to $300,000 a year, a figure he quickly puts into perspective.

“Well, I drive a Cadillac [a contractual perk] now, and I used to drive a Nissan Maxima,” he says. “So gas is higher and insurance is higher, OK?

“And I have to speak more, so I have to buy more suits and sport coats and shoes. And my wife has to buy more clothes. My daughter thinks I’m making more, so now she wants more money to go to college. But it’s all relative. You make more, so you have to spend more.”

A break in speech-making came with spring practice, which involved players meeting the new assistant coaches, and also included a bug-out day, when the team adjourned en masse to Jackie Robinson Stadium to watch a Bruin baseball game and get rowdy.

A new offense and a new defense were force-fed, and, perhaps most important, a new strength and conditioning program was introduced. New coach Kevin Yoxall handled the introductions.

“One thing you know about his workouts is that they’re going to hurt,” said McCullough, who, like his running mate at safety, Shaun Williams, has gained 10 pounds and lost no speed.

McCullough was one of more than 50 scholarship players who stuck around Westwood for the summer to torture their bodies and pledge allegiance to Yoxall. They love the guy.

It’s all part of the plan for a season-long effort at destroying an image. “Other teams say we are soft,” McCullough says. “Not any more.”

Toledo tries to explain away the perception as that of any team with a sophisticated offense that relies on trickery instead of smash-mouth football for success, but he reluctantly acknowledges there is something to this soft business.

“We told them and they’ve heard that they aren’t physical, so we told them we would be more physical,” he said. “We’re going to hit more. We told them, ‘You’ve got to be tough-minded enough so that if you get a bump or a bruise, you aren’t going to go and get a red jersey and sit on the sideline. You’ve got to play hurt. If you’re injured, that’s a different story, but if you’re hurt, you’ve got to play because everybody’s hurt.’ ”

Spring practice was marked by a significant drop in red jerseys, worn by players deemed--in the past, sometimes by themselves--too banged up to participate.

Beginning today, players will see a different Bob Toledo than the one who taught them offense and spent a lot of the last two seasons patting backs.

“I think the thing you have to do when you become a head coach is you have to . . . be yourself,” Toledo said. “You can’t be someone else.”

But Toledo is the sum of many parts. He will be part Donahue, part Rich Brooks, even part Vic Rowen, who taught a young quarterback who set NCAA College Division passing records at San Francisco State in 1966-67.

“He was a great quarterback,” says Bill McQueary, now coach at Lincoln High in Stockton, then a teammate at San Francisco State and a member of Toledo’s staffs at UC Riverside and Pacific. “And he was so competitive. We used to play racquetball every day, and I think he beat me something like 999 times and I beat him one. And I savored that one.”

He won’t be part R.C. Slocum, who fired Toledo at Texas A&M;, but who taught him a valuable lesson in doing so.

From Donahue, he learned patience and how to listen, something Toledo admits he has had difficulty doing. From Brooks, how to be tough-minded and do more with less, something he may have to do this season but hopes he won’t much longer.

From Slocum?

“I learned that the head coach better pay attention to both sides of the ball because the kids sense it if he doesn’t,” Toledo says. “I don’t think a coach can take sides. If anything, [Slocum] was a defensive coach and it was a wrecking crew and he took that side.”

Toledo’s offense could win 10 games and set school records, but somebody had to go when the Aggies couldn’t win the Cotton Bowl, and it wasn’t going to be the head coach.

With UCLA, the former offensive coordinator will sit in on some defensive meetings for the first time since he brought the USC defense to Pacific in 1979.

But the offense will get much of his attention. He can’t help it. It’s how his teams have won, and it’s how he won the Bruin job.

“Al [Borjes, the offensive coordinator] is going to call the plays, but I’m going to have some input because I’ve been doing this for too many years to all of a sudden back off,” Toledo said. “I’ve got some expertise in that area and I want to use it.”

The two have talked about the potential for conflict. At some time during the season, the new offensive coordinator is probably going to have to tell the old offensive coordinator to butt out, that the head coach coaches coaches and the coaches coach players.

“I’ll try to remember the experiences I’ve had, and hopefully I’ve learned from those experiences and will try not to create some of the problems I’ve had,” Toledo said.

Where he will hold his turf is on trickery. The fun part of a Toledo offense is some wacky plays.

“The one thing I’m going to do is make that call,” he said. “As a coordinator I would want to run a special play and sometimes I couldn’t get it called, because the head coach didn’t want that play. As a head coach I can call them whenever I want.

“So when you see a trick play that doesn’t work, don’t blame Al, blame me.”

People won’t hesitate to.

It’s Toledo’s team now, with three weeks to prepare for Tennessee, ranked No. 2 in the preseason polls.

“My wife says this would be a great job if we didn’t have any games,” Toledo said. “It’s been a lot of fun. I’ve met some great people. There hasn’t been pressure. There hasn’t been a lot of stress because we haven’t played anybody yet.

“But it’s coming. I know it’s coming. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I’ve done this before. I know it’s going to come, whether we win or lose. It’s coming, whether we do good or bad. It’s coming. We throw too much or run too much. It’s coming.”

Beginning today, it’s here. Twice.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Toledo File

* BORN: San Jose, March 4, 1946.

* COLLEGE: Began at San Jose State, after one season transferred to San Jose City College, then to San Francisco State, where he set eight NCAA College Division (now Division II) records, passing for 3,513 yards and 45 touchdowns as a senior, in 1967.

* PROFESSIONAL: After a tryout with the San Francisco 49ers, became an assistant, then head coach at San Francisco’s Riordan High from 1970-72. Became offensive coordinator, then head coach at UC Riverside (15-6 record in 1974-75), then an assistant at USC (defensive backs) and head coach at Pacific (12-30 record in 1979-82). Offensive coordinator at Oregon (1983-88), Texas A&M; (1988-93) and UCLA (1994-95).

* PERSONAL: Was UCLA’s third choice as head coach (behind Colorado’s Rick Neuheisel and Northwestern’s Gary Barnett) but says that’s OK, because he wasn’t wife Elaine’s first choice either. They have three daughters.