Aliotti Does His Best to Downplay Return

Nick Aliotti sounds concerned about the attention, slightly vindicated because the UCLA defense still can’t tackle, and less than slightly bothered about the way he was treated by his former boss. But mostly, he sounds like someone doing a bad job of downplaying the personal significance of a game.

“I just think it’s another big conference game and quite an opportunity for our team to prove they can bounce back from a tough loss,” the Oregon defensive coordinator says. “But it’s not Nick Aliotti against UCLA.”

Except that he adds:

“It’s just not, as much as I might want it to be.”

Because he is realistic enough to know that one game at the Rose Bowl will not bring redemption, that a single Saturday night, this one, will not clear his name in Westwood. That will have to come in time.

The years may also take care of the hurt. The months have not.

“I’m guarded against putting things on people’s walls, and this is a game between UCLA and Oregon,” Aliotti said. “This is not about me. But you can’t help but have some feelings.”

Feelings about a chance for vindication.

“Human nature would tend to have one act in that way,” he said.

Feelings about his relationship with Bruin Coach Bob Toledo, a friend before the job-related friction.

“I would say that there is no relationship,” Aliotti said. “I don’t go around with a voodoo doll sticking pins in it or anything. But he’s gone his way and I’ve gone my way. Life continues.

“It’s a difficult thing. It’s tough for me to talk about. The last thing I want to do is come out in the papers like a jerk. That’s not how I am. I don’t want to be a martyr or be a focus of this game. I’ve tried to move on.”

Feelings run deep about last Nov. 9, when Toledo put the blame on Aliotti and the position coaches for the failings of the defense, thereby turning an assistant into a public whipping boy and making Aliotti feel as if he’d been hung out to dry.

“Well, I did,” he said. “But I don’t know how that was perceived by the fans and the media. They probably just see a guy who did a [bad] job coaching defense. But I don’t see it that way. We got to the Rose Bowl. We had some good moments.”

All because of 1998, the only season he spent as the defensive coordinator, or in any capacity, at UCLA. It only felt like 10 years, being yanked from an assistant’s anonymity and put under public scrutiny by Toledo, getting much of the blame for the Bruins not playing for the national championship, feeling the frustration of young players overwhelmed by his schemes and the rush to deploy them.

He was not fired after a season in which the Bruins finished 99th in the country in defense. But when Oregon Coach Mike Bellotti offered him the chance to return to Eugene, where Aliotti had had great success several years earlier as the director of the “Gang Green” unit that went to the Rose Bowl, UCLA did not ask him to stay either.

“I don’t know when I actually decided [to leave],” Aliotti said. “But I’d say this: When you work as hard with a group of gentlemen, putting in all those hours and dealing with the football and all the stuff that goes on around you, that group of people has to be together and cohesive.”

And starting with the Nov. 9 public scolding by Toledo, Aliotti never felt together.

Now, almost midway through the 1999 season, UCLA has just lost a critical game in the final minute because it could not tackle a third-string running back on a screen pass, is sixth in the Pacific 10 in scoring defense and 10th in total defense. The Ducks are third in scoring defense and total defense.

Aliotti has talked briefly with the two Bruin defensive assistants who remain from last year--his successor, Bob Field, and linebacker coach Marc Dove--but not with Toledo. Toledo has spoken of him, though, as in the April comment about Field’s taking over the beleaguered unit: “I think he’ll listen to what I say. It won’t go on deaf ears, as it has in past years.”

There were no such zings Monday, when UCLA returned to practice after the Arizona State loss and turned its attention to Oregon. Toledo was uncharacteristically short, though, when asked about the presence of Aliotti on the other sideline. He gave an answer which may have been commentary in itself.

“Coaches don’t play the game. Players do,” Toledo said. “And let me come right out and answer that bluntly. Nick Aliotti was not fired from this staff. He left on his own accord. And that will be the last time I talk about that all week.”

So began “It’s Just Another Game (wink, wink) Week.”

“I don’t want there to be an article about Nick Aliotti and an article that stirs up any [stuff],” Aliotti said. “I’m not looking for this. I just want to come down there and win a football game.

“Really, it just comes down to how we play as a team. I would like the defense to play well as part of a team win. But I know those are great kids down there. I have a lot of great feelings for them--Jason Bell and Ryan Roques, Tony White, Ryan Nece, Robert Thomas. I see that Joey Strycula is playing well. I could go on and on, but I don’t want to pick some and leave others out by mistake. There’s a lot of great kids at UCLA.”

Which is why it would mean more to win? Because it is UCLA?

“Yeah,” Aliotti said. “Probably.”