Those Were the Days, These Are Leaf’s Days

The last time Washington State University was in the Rose Bowl, Herbert Hoover was president, the stock market had crashed, the Great Depression was on us, bread was a nickel (but nobody had the nickel), a can of salmon was a dime, beer was an illegal substance, newspapers were three cents a copy, gas was a dime a gallon, and new Fords were $400 but everybody rode the streetcar. Tokens were three for a quarter.

The year was 1931. The Rose Bowl was enlarged that year--to 86,500 seats--but it wasn’t sold out. Probably the last time that happened. The Bowl had originally cost only $272,198.26, none of it public money.

Washington State lost that game, 24-0, to Alabama. The Cougars had a mastodonic front line featuring future all-pros such as Turk Edwards and Mel Hein, but Alabama ran around them, not through them.

Washington State players burned their uniforms after that game and vowed never to lose in the Rose Bowl again.

So far they have kept that promise. By not going. For 67 (count ‘em!) years.

But, now, they’ve turned over a new Leaf.

That would be Ryan David Leaf of the Great Falls, Mont., Leaves, as it were, and he’s not into losing.

Washington State is not coming to the Rose Bowl this time with a troglodytic defense and a secondary that seemed to be playing in wet cement. This time the Cougars are as modern as e-mail. Ryan proposes to turn ye Rose Bowl into a Leaf-y glade.

You know, in Coast football lore, USC is known as “Tailback U.” The Trojans usually have a guy with one arm on the football and the other on the Heisman.

But, Washington State U., otherwise identified as “Wazoo” in the student seats, has come to be recognized as “Quarterback U.”

No other school has recruited such gifted throwers of the football this era, a succession that began with Jack Thompson in 1975-78 and continued through Mark Rypien, Timm Rosenbach and, most recently, Drew Bledsoe. WSU was armed and dangerous.

Rypien and Bledsoe appeared in Super Bowls but Leaf is the only one of these arms dealers who put the Cougars in the Rose Bowl.

He did it with a pass scheme that is so identified with its design out here that the rest of the country calls it “the West Coast offense.” It calls for airing out the ball on every down. Every play looks like a prison bust out.

Leaf is perfect for this style of attack because, first of all, he doesn’t look like a quarterback. He looks like a--well, a truck driver or a bouncer in a nightclub.

At 6 feet 5, 240 pounds, you’re surprised some coach didn’t try to talk him into playing linebacker--or power forward. But he is perfect for the West Coast offense, which provides only one remaining back to fend off the pass rush. Ryan is as difficult to bring down as the Washington Monument. This is no falling Leaf.

You know, it used to be you couldn’t talk a first-class prospect like Leaf into going to Pullman. But since Rypien and Bledsoe, it has been a yellow brick road.

Half the Pacific 10 and many of the other big schools from Miami to Colorado wanted Leaf. He had Rose Bowl written all over him. Maybe Super Bowl.

He went to Washington State precisely because he wanted to go to the Rose Bowl. Which shows the mail must have been awfully slow in coming to his part of Montana or Leaf doesn’t believe everything he reads.

“I wanted to play in the same Bowl that Elway, Jim Plunkett and Warren Moon played,” he explains.

Washington State seemed the hard way to do that, but Leaf didn’t shake. “Growing up in Montana was a humbling experience to begin with,” he shrugs.

He was a better-then-average basketball player but no Michael Jordan. “It wasn’t hard to see football was my best sport.”

He taught himself to pass the football. Which is to say he did it by himself. Some people recruit a kid brother or sister to field the throws but not Ryan. He completed passes to himself. “I ran back and forth in the snow till I got open,” he grins. He quickly decided he liked the throwing part best.

He picked Wazoo because he liked what had happened between his coach, Mike Price, and his hit man, Bledsoe. A career quarterback looks for two things in a college curriculum--a wide-open passing game and an offensive line as difficult to cross as the Alps.

So WSU became a school that goes to the Rose Bowl every 67 years or so and Ryan Leaf became one of the top two runners-up for the Heisman Trophy this year. He passed for 3,637 yards and 33 touchdowns and a total offense average of 325.71 yards a game. He threw an interception only once every 37 throws.

The Rose Bowl game is being held forth as a competition between Leaf on offense and Michigan’s Heisman winner, Charles Woodson, on defense. Leaf dissents. “A quarterback can make a difference in a game. A cornerback cannot defend against all five receivers no matter how good he is.”

All he has to do now is pick out the four Woodson is not defending against. He hopes for a happy ending this time because past performance indicates WSU won’t get in the Rose Bowl again till the year 2064. And someone will write “The last time WSU was in a Rose Bowl, Clinton was president, bread was a dollar, only a dozen people had been on the moon and you could buy a new car for as little as $50,000.”