He Just Doesn’t Get It

It was after 11 p.m. Monday when former UCLA quarterback Cade McNown arrived at the Bears’ training camp, driving his truck up to George R. Dobson Hall and parking atop a white wheelchair painted on the dark asphalt, right in front of a fluorescent sign reserving the spot for the handicapped.

Corey McPherrin, the sports director for WFLD-TV, and his cameraman stood nearby, dumbfounded witnesses laughing in disbelief before turning on the camera.

“Can you imagine that?” said McPherrin. “No, no, we’re not going to put it on the air, because there were just a couple of us out there . . . it was dark . . . he was kind of parked at an angle . . . I’m not sure he knew where he was . . . I’m sure it was just an oversight on his part.”

Letting an athlete off the hook . . . what a novel concept.

It raises this question, however, a day after the Bears gave McNown a $22-million contract: If the guy can’t read signs, why should anyone think he can read defenses?

It’s going to be a struggle for McNown. There are only 70 handicapped parking spaces on the entire University of Wisconsin Platteville campus and 32 of those are opposite the football stadium, all in a line on a stretch of road that can now be called McNown Avenue.

Maybe the guy needs glasses. Maybe they don’t teach sign reading at UCLA. Maybe he’s under the impression the sign makes an exception for quarterbacks.

As a public service, maybe a teammate can read this to him:

Reserved Space

Vehicles with Vet or Dis Plates

or State Disabled Card

Giving McNown the benefit of the doubt, the signs don’t say which state. Maybe he still has his California handicapped-parking placard.

McNown wouldn’t say. Fact is, he wouldn’t talk.

Nine of McNown’s former UCLA teammates pleaded no contest to illegally acquiring handicapped-parking placards, five asked for continuances and running back Skip Hicks, who has gone on to play with the Washington Redskins, recently apologized for the same shortage of good sense.

“I’m not going to condemn them,” McNown told the Chicago Tribune, which is sort of like Jesse James saying he wouldn’t call Billy the Kid a bad guy.

McNown, who acquired a handicapped-parking placard from February to June 1997, never responded to the Los Angeles Times’ telephone attempts to reach him for comment, but told the Chicago Tribune he had used the placard once, maybe twice at the most, and charged The Times with defaming him.

He said he was injured at the time, although a UCLA spokesman said there was no indication of an injury at the time, and in an April scrimmage, after practicing with the team every day, McNown completed 18 passes in a scrimmage. Given the quality of the Bruin defense, he could have been hurt . . . playing on crutches . . . sitting in a wheelchair, and completed 18 passes.

But come on. He also told the Tribune in an interview, although the reporter chose to give him a break by keeping the quotes out of the story, “I’m by no means defending [his teammates], but there’s no parking at UCLA. . . . A lot of guys live off campus and it’s very expensive.”

Approached here by The Times as he entered the team’s cafeteria, McNown reacted as if the Viking pass rush was in hot pursuit, scrambling inside and saying over his shoulder, “I’ll do it later.”

He didn’t immediately add, “But probably not in your lifetime,” but that message was delivered later in the day by a representative of the team.

McNown then sneaked out the back door of the cafeteria to avoid a reporter. Sources said later this tactic is taught at UCLA.

A club official went to his dorm room to try to persuade him to come out of hiding, but a club official earning less than six figures a year apparently has no pull with a 22-year-old with a $6.1-million signing bonus warming his pocket.

McNown, who had promised to be signed in time to be here for the opening of training camp July 22, was only 12 days late, presumably because he couldn’t find a parking place at the team’s headquarters in Lake Forest, Ill.

After signing a seven-year deal that can be shortened to five years--to his benefit--if he takes 35% of the snaps, he took off driving for Wisconsin Monday.

At a toll booth he shouted at the collector, “I have no cash. I have credit,” eventually persuading the operator to let him pass without paying the 40 cents. Maybe he waved his California handicapped-parking placard. Whatever.

The Chicago media, of course, couldn’t care less where Cade McNown parks. In fact the joke going around here is that he should hang onto that handicapped-parking placard if he’s going to start at quarterback for the Bears.

They already love the gutty little guy.

No matter that he wasn’t smart enough to deal with the handicapped-placard fiasco and get on with it. That’s L.A.’s problem.

No matter that he wasn’t mature enough to accept responsibility, or at the very least acknowledge why some people might be upset.

Cade McNown’s a gamer, and the people here think his “attitude, the edge he brings to the game,” are charming, the same thing fans and reporters were saying about Ryan Leaf a year ago in San Diego.

This star-starved team went 4-12 a year ago and had Moses Moreno and Steve Stenstrom playing quarterback down the stretch. Now that’s a handicap. McNown offers promise, and, in the opinion of most football observers, the best chance to play effectively among the five quarterbacks selected in the first round. Even with the Bears.

And this is a team sorely in need of good news. This week, former No. 1 pick Rashaan Salaam, who had come from Colorado after winning the Heisman Trophy, revealed that he had lost 14 fumbles in 31 games with Chicago because he was playing in a marijuana-induced haze. As is the case with many former marijuana users, he now plays for the Raiders.

This also is an organization that has been a long-running NFL joke. The Bears cut projected quarterback starter Erik Kramer before signing McNown, providing yet more leverage for the 12th player selected in the draft.

The team’s president, Michael McCaskey, was demoted by his mother. It has been eight years since the Bears made the playoffs, 14 since they won a playoff game and went on to win the Super Bowl.

Hail McNown.

“This guy is our future,” new Coach Dick Jauron said. “His attitude is what makes him special.”

Sometimes, it can also be a handicap.

*

HE’S OUT OF THE GAME: Bill Chadwick, Gov. Gray Davis’ representative in talks with the NFL, resigned. B1