Bruin May Say He’s Not About the Hype, but the Hype Will Be About Him

Somewhere amid embracing the hype, cherishing the team, displaying the toughness, giving the looks, accepting the sad realities and ignoring the pressure, all that leftover time remains.

There must be dozens of seconds of it. Cade McNown will use it to attend classes, play quarterback for UCLA, speak about the importance of God in his life, hunt and try not to three-putt. On those stolen moments, he might even sneak in time to win the Heisman Trophy.

There might also be some quiet time. That’s when things can really get interesting, or exciting, or scary. It’s when all the talk that has sold almost everyone on the idea that he doesn’t give much thought to the top individual award in college football gets peeled back, and McNown will say to close friend Greg Sherwood:

“Dude, what if it happens?”

For one thing, someone will have to tell McNown how the presentation works, because he has never seen the Heisman show on TV. Maybe he won’t see it on TV this year either.

Embracing the Hype

McNown had already made up his mind to ride the wave rather than go against it, but the advice has come anyway. Ronnie Lott, recalling his USC days when teammates would react to interview requests as if they were ticking, encouraged him to enjoy the process. Gary Beban, who won the Heisman in 1967 as UCLA’s quarterback, sent a letter about a month ago that offered a reminder that team achievements were still most important. The two had not met until this week, but McNown appreciated the note.

“If you convince yourself that you don’t like it, then every time you’re dealing with it you’re going to hate it,” McNown said. “But you can just say, look, I’m having fun with it, and it’s good while it lasts. By no means should you buy into it and let what people say about you be how you perceive yourself. Just enjoy it. Embrace it. Take it for what it’s worth.

“I go in after the game for the interviews and I’m calling guys by their first name sometimes and kind of laughing at some of the questions they have. They’re kind of taken aback by it. I’ll get questions and I’ll be, ‘C’mon. You kidding? That’s a terrible question.’ I’m not afraid to say something like that anymore.”

Good thing, because there should be plenty of opportunities for such serve-and-volley games, even before the first postgame “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” McNown has already done a series of one-on-one interviews. He will do a weekly conference call with out-of-town reporters once the season starts, the first time UCLA has done that since 10 years ago with Troy Aikman. He will also be available for additional in-person media sessions, but, to keep control, the sports information department will limit those to Mondays and Tuesdays, another practice from the Aikman days.

“He’s got to buy into it,” said Marc Dellins, UCLA’s sports information director. “If he isn’t willing to do the interviews, then the purpose is defeated. And he’s been very cooperative, especially since I know this is not something he wants for himself. If it were up to him, I think he’d rather take that extra time and put it in the film room.”

Said McNown: “I’m not going to shy away from it. I’m not afraid of it. I’ve been dealing with the media for three years already, and even though it’s on a different scale now, it’s still the same sort of questions--’Are you going to be able to do this? Are you going to be able to do that?’ ”

Or there’s always this one:

Is winning the Heisman more important than you’re letting on?

“He’ll debate it, and it’s probably the right thing to do, to debate it,” said David Norrie, a friend and the commentator for UCLA’s Fox Sports West 2 broadcasts. “I don’t think he gloats and he doesn’t focus on it, which is the proper approach. But I think it’s something that spurs him on. The level of success, the notoriety, the support he gets from teammates, I think it’s driven him.

“Cade is a team-oriented guy. But Cade is also a guy, I think, who enjoys the attention, because football is what Cade lives for.”

Cherishing the Team

“I’m running a Rose Bowl campaign, not a Heisman campaign,” McNown says.

He was the one who organized the seven-on-seven passing league games during the summer. He was the one who took in Freddie Mitchell in an off-campus apartment when Mitchell, a flanker from Lakeland, Fla., wanted to stay around to take part but had no student housing because school was out, even though the two were not close friends. He was the one who cooked for them both.

“I think there’s a kind of sweetness about it to him,” McNown’s older brother Jeff said. “He recognizes how blessed he is. He recognizes that there’s a lot of guys out there with the same arm and the same skills who are squandering away in bad programs.”

Instead of, say, the one that opens the season No. 7 in the nation and favored by many to win the Pacific 10 Conference title.

“I totally respect the award,” Cade McNown said. “I’m totally honored to be a candidate. But that’s not why I came here. I came here to try to win some Rose Bowls, and I got another shot at it this year.

“Certainly I feel I have to be 100%. But not for them [fans and voters]. Not for anybody but for this team.

“And not for myself, either. As soon as you start going out of your way to try and make things happen, it’s like you’re putting your ego before the team’s success and all of the sudden you’re doing things that cost the team more than they actually reward you. You can’t get into that situation.”

Displaying Toughness

“Cade McNown is easily the toughest quarterback who has played in the league since 1981,” said Norrie, who played in it from 1982 to ’85 and has watched closely ever since. “I’m sure of it. I’m positive of it. He’s the type of guy that if you’re hitting him, if the team is behind, his play will get better. All you have to do is turn on the Washington State game last year. Even better, the Tennessee game. He was making extraordinary plays.

“Cade can be sensitive off the field. But I don’t think he’s sensitive on the field. In fact, he can be downright insensitive on the field. He’ll run down the field and look for a defensive back to hit with a helmet. On the field, I’ve never seen Cade shy about what he’s doing. Cade’s a winner. And he’s the toughest quarterback I’ve seen in the league in two decades.”

Giving the Looks

Here’s the thanks McNown gets for taking in a teammate in need: Mitchell caught a ball during one of those passing league games, crossed the goal line and decided to strike the pose, breaking into the stance captured on the Heisman Trophy. And then he pointed to his quarterback.

McNown grinned back. Just like the other times when teammates ride him with equal joy for all the billboards and newspaper ads and hype, because what are friends for? He’ll usually smile, sometimes shake his down-turned head, and occasionally throw in a “shut up.”

Heismania. That’s a favorite line when he walks in a room.

McHeisman. Also popular.

“Because they just know it makes me upset,” he said. “More than anything, what I want these guys to know is that I’m not about it. I’m not about the hype. I’m not about trying to get people’s attention and trying to be the guy that stands out.”

In truth, the preseason buildup has been considerable but not ridiculous, devoid of McNown key chains or McNown coffee mugs or McNown T-shirts. The ads are obvious, but those are just as much to promote ticket sales as the individual. The school budgeted extra money for the Heisman push, then devoted six pages in its media guide for McNown, compared to about half a page for most teammates. He appeared first, everyone else went in alphabetical order.

He has his own page on the UCLA web site: https://www.uclabruins.com/mcnown. He was the star of the three-minute highlight video set to music that was sent to 450 media members and a few former winners of the award, mostly directed at voters from the South, East and Midwest, on the notion that everyone near the Pac-10 has either seen McNown in person or on a regional telecast. Postcards and fliers and other mailings could come later, depending on whether McNown remains a contender.

Accepting Sad Realities

“You’d be amazed at some of the fans around here,” McNown said. “Geez.”

It’s a bandwagon city.

“Very. They’re not sticking by you. They’ll be off the boat faster than rats on a flaming boat.

“I’ve been through it, where it’s ‘What have you done for me lately?’ People around here, certainly, but anywhere, they turn on you a lot faster than they come around for you. It’s funny. But it’s very, very true. And I’ve had it.

“I remember my sophomore year, the last game of the year we go out and we beat USC in a dramatic comeback and it’s like everybody in the world loves you and everything. Second game of the [junior] year, first home game, and those same people that were patting me on the back are booing me after an interception. Everybody’s on the field, it’s quiet, I run on the field: ‘Booooooo!’ I’m like, geez. So not only am I aware of it, but it’s happened to me and I’m very understanding of how things turn.

“Blew me away.”

He’s not the same Cade McNown who arrived in 1995, who as a sophomore lost the innocence while taking a lot of the heat for the 5-6 finish when there was actually plenty of blame to go around. And who in 1997 led the nation and set a Pac-10 record in passing efficiency, posting the 12th-best mark in NCAA history, and finished eighth in the Heisman balloting.

Friends say he has become more calloused about the task at hand, a notion he does not deny. The love for the game has not diminished, but the hardened attitude arrives before the scheduled entrance to the pros a year from now.

“I think there’s been an eye-opening experience for him in that sports at UCLA, sure it’s athletics, but it’s a business,” Sherwood said. “He has had his eyes opened to the reality that coaches’ jobs are very important to them and the media’s job is very important to them, but not everybody has the chance to look out for him.

“It’s beyond the game a little bit for him. It’s beyond the game that it’s more like a business for him. It was very sobering for him. I don’t think he’s mad about that or anything. It was the reality--’I’ve got to produce or that’s it.’ ”

Said Norrie: “He’ll say, ‘Oh, yeah. Wait until I throw a bad ball or have a bad drive.’ I think that was part of his development, the adversity he fought through.

“If he’s criticized or someone treats him the wrong way, he’ll take it personally. In so many ways, he’s beyond his years. He’s beyond his 21 years. But in some other ways--his sensitivity--he’s younger than 21.”

Ignoring the Pressure

During the Stanford game last season, McNown appeared frustrated after some dropped passes. Sherwood noticed while watching on television and later confronted him, suggesting that McNown had gotten caught up in the excitement of an impressive passing-efficiency rating.

McNown fell silent. He didn’t disagree.

Now comes a slightly bigger race.

“Being under the microscope for every play,” he said of the challenge, “they’re going to try and analyze something. I watched some of the guys play last year, like [Peyton] Manning. They’ll say, ‘Now watch Manning throw this swing pass here. That’s just experience right there. He puts it right on the money. This is not an easy throw.’ Where I’d go back and throw the same swing pass and nobody would say a thing. On the other end of the spectrum, it’s like he does what he’s probably supposed to and throws the ball away and it’s like, ‘Manning, he’s a Heisman Trophy candidate. He’s got make those plays. He’s got to move the chains in this situation.’

“Every little move gets put under the microscope, good and bad. The key is not paying attention to those play-to-play critics and just understanding that, hey, it’s a long season. There are a lot of things that are going to happen between the first play of the Texas game and the last play of, hopefully, our bowl game that’ll dictate what sort of team we’re going to be.

“In many ways, the pressure last year may have been more than it is this year. I feel like I’ve sort of been through some of those fires, been tempered a bit. But with each year, new challenges come up. I don’t think it’s bad right now. What’s going to be a question mark is how you handle it when things aren’t going well. Maybe you go out there, the team wins, but, ‘You didn’t look that impressive.’ How are you going to handle that? I can just tell you right now, I’m going to probably throw some interceptions.”

No!

“Yeah. It’s amazing. You can actually make mistakes even if you’re hyped as much as I am. I will make mistakes. I’ll make some bad reads and probably hurt the team a little bit at times, but the question is, am I going to repeat those mistakes? You don’t want to repeat ‘em. The other question is, how are you going to react to it? Are you going to go into the tank? Are you going to just fall apart? I haven’t, and I don’t think I will.”