Neuheisel Is on Other Side of Field

Wasn’t it supposed to be like this?

Rick Neuheisel coaching in Pasadena on a Saturday afternoon with a Pacific 10 championship within reach? With a team peaking at the end of the season? With a team capable of scoring sprees and a quarterback who has become a top candidate for conference player of the year?

That team isn’t UCLA, where Neuheisel went from walk-on quarterback to starter to 1984 Rose Bowl most valuable player to a rising-star member of Terry Donahue’s staff. In Saturday afternoon’s game in Pasadena, Neuheisel’s Washington Huskies are the team in control of the Pac-10 race while the Bruins struggle to climb out of the cellar.

Imagine that. Neuheisel speaks of a time when he could not have imagined turning down the UCLA job and now he comes to town as a hot commodity revived, trying to win on his former field to keep the drive alive for Jan. 1 in the Rose Bowl. That it also could have been his current field has not been lost on many.

Neuheisel was, after all, the popular choice to become Bruin coach in 1994 after Donahue retired, despite an acrimonious split with Donahue a year earlier. Neuheisel said he was also UCLA’s choice, that the job was offered, but Athletic Director Pete Dalis denies that. Whatever the circumstances, two things are certain:

* Neuheisel withdrew from a list of candidates that included Northwestern’s Gary Barnett and Kansas State’s Bill Snyder because of timing. He had been at Colorado for only one season and felt it wasn’t right to do a quick U-turn.

* It set in motion a chain of dramatic events.

Neuheisel got the top job at Colorado and became an immediate success, going 10-2 in 1995 and ’96 before blowing up and leaving for Washington before this season as an unpopular figure in Boulder. Bob Toledo, who was well regarded by Dalis but didn’t have the big name for public recognition, emerged from the pack and proved to be a great hire. Barnett, never hotter than that season after taking Northwestern to the Rose Bowl, stayed for three more campaigns--and ended up becoming Neuheisel’s replacement at Colorado.

“It was very difficult,” Neuheisel said. “If somebody would have told me that I was going to get offered the UCLA head coaching job and turn it down, I would have said, ‘You’re absolutely nuts.’ But the timing of what took place just made it very difficult to consider it, because of the great leap of faith Colorado had taken in giving me an opportunity, without even having been a coordinator. We started well and there was no reason to think that Colorado wasn’t going to continue to do well. Because of all that, I just felt like the right thing to do was to stay. I don’t regret that decision at all.

“I don’t spend much time thinking about things that didn’t happen. I count my blessings, in all the good things that have happened to me in my life. I’ve been very fortunate. I’m thankful to Terry Donahue and for the opportunity to come to UCLA as a walk-on. He gave me my first scholarship. He gave me my first job as a volunteer assistant and then he gave me my first job as a full-time assistant.

“The opportunities that the University of California at Los Angeles have afforded me are too numerous to count. I’ve just been very, very fond of all my experiences there, and yet I think that things are going well for me and I think UCLA has done a great job in terms of hiring Bob Toledo. He’s done great things for the program as well.”

Toledo is the first to acknowledge how Neuheisel’s decision probably affected his life, though UCLA officials have never said Neuheisel was the front-runner for the job in the first place.

Neuheisel, meanwhile, has taken steps to repair his image everywhere outside Colorado, after going a combined 13-10 his final two years there and then opening 0-2 at Washington, on the heels of a contract that pays close to $1 million annually. The rejuvenation to the season has included wins in the last three games and six of the last seven--including against the Buffaloes--and vaulted the Huskies to the Pac-10 lead.

Along the way, they have scored at least 31 points in all seven games except the Oct. 16 loss to Arizona State, the only time they have failed to hit at least 21. The catalyst has been quarterback Marques Tuiasosopo, the son of former UCLA defensive lineman Manu Tuiasosopo. He is No. 1 in the conference and No. 18 in the nation in total offense and jumped all the way from third to first in the conference on the strength of one amazing game: 302 yards passing and 207 yards rushing Oct. 30 against Stanford to become the first Division I player ever with the 300-200 double.

Wins in the final two games of the season, Saturday against the Bruins and a week later at home against Washington State, guarantees a return trip to Pasadena, this time for a Jan. 1 contest. Just as envisioned.