At UCLA, Sophomore Quarterback Cade McNown and Junior Running Back Skip Hicks Will Be the... : FOCUS ON OFFENSE : He May Be on His Way to Renown

It’s near sundown at Spaulding Field on the UCLA campus, and Cade McNown, who began the day with two pain pills and a tender left arm, is standing at the goal line, shirtless, barefoot and still throwing as though the next ball will bring the answer to the passing universe.

And throwing again, to make sure the last pass wasn’t a fluke.

Morning meetings, and then maybe 200 passes. Afternoon meetings, and then 200 more passes. Running, and then more passes. He’s the football equivalent of a gym rat--a field mouse?--giving it up only because there’s no one else to throw to, or because there’s an evening meeting to attend.

He lives on campus, because to live anywhere else would mean shopping and cooking, time spent away from the game.

A freshman-to-sophomore summer at UCLA involved conducting football clinics at L.A. Unified high schools. When he got away for 10 days in Oregon, it was with teammates Chris Sailer and Tod McBride to fish, water ski and talk football.

He keeps outsiders at arm’s length. If they don’t play, they wouldn’t understand.

“I’m never away from football,” he says. “It’s always there, wherever I go. . . . It’s always on my mind.

“All my friends here play football. I have acquaintances here who don’t play football, but my friends play football because that’s who you go through your tough times with.”

That single-mindedness helped him become UCLA’s starting quarterback as a freshman. It’s driving him as a sophomore, who is still working as though there is a job to win.

“He’s fascinated by football,” says Al Borges, the Bruins’ offensive coordinator and quarterback coach who is introducing a new offense at UCLA. “I think Cade is fascinated by this style of play, and when you’ve got a quarterback as naturally fascinated by a style of play as Cade is, he will naturally seize on every opportunity to learn it.

“Of course, he’d be fascinated with the wishbone, if we put it in. Because it’s football, he’d find a way to like it, even though it’s not really his deal.”

Well, maybe not the wishbone. It’s too much like the winged-T run at San Benito High in Hollister, Calif., and he left that school for West Linn, Ore., as a senior because the new school threw the ball.

He is a quarterback who wants to throw. And run. That’s enough ego gratification. Pictures in a preseason magazine don’t catch passes and they don’t win games.

“A couple of times I’ve caught myself thinking, ‘This is really sweet, starting as a freshman at UCLA,’ and then I stop and think that this is really stupid to get wrapped up in that,” he says. “That’s why we still have a season, to have outcomes. We don’t just write about it and that’s it.”

He learned that quickly, going into his senior season at West Linn. He had missed most of his junior year in Hollister because of an appendectomy, and had attended some summer camps to get some attention from college recruiters.

“I went to this Reebok combine in Northern California at St. Mary’s University and a lot of colleges were there,” he says. “I didn’t feel like I did very good, but all of a sudden my picture was in that stupid sports magazine or whatever. I said, ‘This is a joke. I didn’t do well at this thing.’ ”

It was no joke. By the end of his senior season in West Linn, he and Brock Huard of Puyallup, Wash., were regarded as the top quarterbacks on the West Coast. Washington took Huard, where he could join his brother, Damon. McNown took UCLA, really recruited the school himself, sending videotape and courting a scholarship that was happily proffered.

The Bruins got something of a precocious pain in the neck.

“I was pushing the offensive coordinator [then Bob Toledo], ‘Give me the playbook. Give me some stuff.’ from the time I signed my letter of intent,” McNown says. “ ‘Send me a playbook or send me some plays or send me anything.’ I studied that pretty good. I would call our coach at least once a week, trying to get him to help me out on stuff, help me figure out what these things meant. I would go to my high school coach too, trying to figure it out.”

He reported as ready as a freshman can be and quickly established himself. Ryan Fien was the starter, but he was knocked woozy by a Miami defender in the first game. Rob Walker was the backup, a fifth-year senior with marginal talent and some experience. Steve Buck was the heir apparent, a redshirt freshman, but with a broken thumb on his throwing hand.

“I was just . . . trying to come down and prove to the coaches what I could do and let them know of my capabilities,” McNown says. “Let them take it from there. Things were pretty much out of my control. I was also thinking that I would pretty much be a spectator. On the other hand, I was also trying to work hard and prepare so that if I ever got a chance, I would not make a fool out of myself.”

He didn’t. McNown threw two passes, completing both, against Miami. He played from the second quarter on against Brigham Young, learning at the end of an option play that he could take a college hit.

He started against Oregon and learned that passing has its perils when he threw his first interception. He also learned about being benched, then coming back and engineering a drive that came inches short of winning the game.

Fien sounded off about losing the job and eventually moved on to Idaho for his last season. McNown quietly kept the job, learning all the while and turning mistakes into enough opportunities to win seven games.

He is the Bruins’ leading returning rusher, with 311 yards in 71 carries, many of them because he was a confused freshman. A play would begin and he would look for a receiver. If one wasn’t quickly apparent, he would tuck the ball under his arm, trying--and often succeeding--to make something from nothing. More patience and poise would have meant more passes completed, but you want patience from a kid playing in front of 60,000 people, 12 weeks after his high school prom? And he did, after all, run for five touchdowns.

“He is an athlete,” says Buck. “He throws better on the run, and he can run, can make things happen.”

It was a long freshman season, though. The Bruins were 5-4 in his nine starts, during which he completed 122 of 245 passes for 1,698 yards and seven touchdowns, with eight interceptions.

He had a 308-yard passing game against Fresno State, a Bruin freshman record.

His freshman season also involved stepping into a huddle of seniors as an 18-year-old, telling them the play they would run and sending them on their way.

“That was never any problem,” said wide receiver Derek Ayers, now a senior. “He was in charge. It was our job to run the play, and we learned he could make the play work.”

In late December, during preparations for the Aloha Bowl, he climbed the stairs in the Morgan Center to talk with Pete Dalis, UCLA’s athletic director, to tell him to forget about Gary Barnett and others rumored to be replacing coach Terry Donahue, who had retired.

You’ve got the man on your staff, said McNown. He sent me plays while I was still in Oregon.

“I can’t say I was surprised, because I got to know Cade last year and he’s a different kind of kid,” says Dalis. “He’s mature and forthcoming. He wasn’t provocative. He came in almost shyly. In my 13 years as athletic director, I’ve never had a kid come to me [to try to get a coach a job].”

Curious, Dalis called in other players and, though he says that was only one factor in the decision, Toledo got the job.

It was the quarterback as leader, seizing the initiative, perhaps scrambling when the first option was open. Making a play. Still football.

Always football.

He is older now, a 19-year-old leader with a new coaching staff, many new teammates and a new offense.

“It’s been my experience . . . that [quarterbacks] take a big jump from their freshman year to spring, and then they take another big jump from spring to fall practice,” Toledo says. “Those are the two biggest jumps that they make in their careers. I’m really hoping that Cade can take that next big step.”

McNown will still run, but Bruin coaches hope the jaunts will be more limited and more by design. They will move him around in the backfield, Steve Young-style, and McNown likes the idea because Young is his hero. And, like Young, McNown is left-handed.

“What I want him to do is to learn to use his arm to win games and his legs to improvise, and not vice versa,” says Borges. “I’m never going to tell a kid, ‘Don’t run,’ because there are some instances in which you must. But I think every passer will beat people with his arm first, with his legs second.”

McNown is more succinct.

“You run for yards, but you pass for miles,” he says.

It’s why he’s out there in the afternoon, throwing, throwing, throwing, still seeking the perfect pass.

“This isn’t a cushy job where you can make a lot of mistakes and keep the job,” he says. “If I make a bunch of mistakes, I still think and know I’m going to be taken out. That’s how I have to approach it, because it’s going to make me do a better job.”