Bruins Taking the Good With Bad

I had UCLA pegged for a subpar football season and a super basketball season.

Turns out, it could be the other way around.

UCLA’s men’s athletic department has had a hard couple of years, losing a football coach and dismissing a basketball coach. Relatively inexperienced men were given the jobs.

The heat is on for both programs. Coach Bob Toledo’s football team, led by quarterback Cade McNown, has two huge football games: Saturday at home against Washington and then the USC rumble. (If I ever write a Western, remind me to name my town marshal Cade McNown. I really like that name.)

Meanwhile, the stripped-down UCLA basketball team has begun exhibition play, with the real thing to start Thanksgiving Eve. (I am sure Coach Steve Lavin will work hard with what he has. I only hope he has five players left.)

What a weird semester this has been in Westwood.

I never would have predicted that the Bruins could be playing football on New Year’s Day--and maybe against Michigan, as they did in the 1983 Rose Bowl and 1981 Bluebonnet Bowl. I think UCLA’s football players and coaches should be proud of themselves, no matter if they go 9-2 or 7-4 now.

Counting the last four games of Terry Donahue’s last season, from Nov. 4, 1995 through Sept. 6, 1997, UCLA went through a stretch of 20 games in which it won eight. That ended with the 66-3 raid on Texas.

That game didn’t turn a season around; it turned an entire program around.

I could have foreseen a 1998 championship for UCLA’s basketball team, and many have projected exactly that. Such educated guesses, however, were made by magazines with long advance deadlines, unaware that key UCLA players wouldn’t make the opening tip.

(The 49ers aren’t the 49ers without Jerry Rice, the Bulls aren’t the Bulls without Scottie Pippen and the Bruins aren’t the Bruins without Jelani McCoy and Kris Johnson. You can win, but you drop from great to good.)

I give credit to UCLA’s administration for taking a hard line on student discipline. No exceptions were made, no special privileges given.

Many schools would have overlooked anything for a star basketball player, selling their souls in the process.

Last season, Lavin was applauded for benching a key player for a big game, for disciplinary reasons. It demonstrated that the new coach was in charge. I didn’t think benching someone for only the first five minutes of a game demonstrated much of anything, but it did seem to have its desired effect.

Lavin and his superiors have acted far more firmly in the cases of currently suspended Johnson and McCoy, neither of whom is ready to jump to the NBA as an alternative. I believe Johnson and McCoy will become better men if they learn from this, and meantime, UCLA sends a message that it will not indulge irresponsible behavior in exchange for points and blocked shots.

I have seldom seen an “indefinite” suspension of a student-athlete; usually, a kid is inactive for a game or ineligible until grades come out. This is very effective. It means shape up or ship out. It means, “Forget ‘forgive and forget.’ We’re tired of forgiving and forgetting.”

So many athletes get off the hook that way.

Every time they get away with something, it is because somebody excuses it by saying he’s sorry. I came down hard on Charles Barkley recently, in part because every time Barkley does something wrong, somebody brings up how sorry Charles is, or how it’s always somebody else’s fault. Charles is sorry he (spat at) (punched) (elbowed) (threw through a window) that person, because usually he is really nice.

I came down equally hard on Shaquille O’Neal, and many people demanded to know why. It was because I thought it was important he be publicly embarrassed. From now on, I want Shaq to think twice. He is a team leader. He is a great athlete. But if everybody lets him get away with everything, he will never be all that he can be.