For Bob Toledo, DeShaun Foster Case Is a Real ...DRUG TEST

You are the head football coach. You make the call.

It is seven days before the season opener, a statement game against the nation’s No. 3-ranked team.

You wake up to learn that, a couple of weeks earlier, your star tailback pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of possessing one ounce or less of marijuana.

You summon the tailback to a Saturday morning meeting. There is anger, scolding, an apology.

You ask if he was smoking the marijuana. He says no.

You ask him if the marijuana belonged to him. He says no.

In your five years here, you have been a law-and-order coach. You have suspended players from games big and small, for everything from street fighting to illegally parking in handicapped spaces.

You have also been a vocal anti-drug coach. You pushed for the eventual tightening of a university drug policy that critics called lax.

But, more than anything else, you have been a players coach. You have trusted your kids until they have proven you otherwise.

And, well, there’s the little matter of last season.

Eleven starters and key reserves were suspended for the first two games in the handicapped parking scandal, and the team never recovered. If something like that happened again . . .

If you suspend the tailback this time, it could be a nightmare.

But if you don’t suspend the tailback, it could be a nightmare.

You make the call.

*

The answer to the above problem was this:

UCLA 35, Alabama 24.

Bob Toledo did not suspend DeShaun Foster.

In turn, Foster ran 42 times for 187 yards and three touchdowns to lead the Bruins to an opening-day upset that would have been impossible without him.

At the time, before word of the misdemeanor leaked, the decision must have seemed brilliant.

Now, at the very least, it seems questionable.

By supporting his player, Bob Toledo has left himself vulnerable.

By believing in a 20-year-old kid, Toledo is testing the faith of a community that has given him its unconditional support.

The Alabama game was big.

This is bigger.

The Alabama game will be forgotten by next year.

This could follow Toledo for the rest of his UCLA career.

“I know how this is going to look,” Toledo said this week. “I know what some people are going to say.”

They are going to say that he was so weakened by last year’s troubles, he is unwilling to wield that sort of hammer again.

They are going to say that, like many coaches who have established themselves at major programs, Toledo’s high sense of ethics and morality have been overwhelmed by the desire to win.

They are going to start comparing Bob Toledo to Tom Osborne, only not in a good way.

But then there will be others saying something different. Their words are also worth hearing.

They will say that, because the police treated it like a car-pool lane infraction--handing Foster a summons that he mailed in with a $250 fine-- why should Toledo treat it worse?

They will say that, because UCLA doesn’t suspend athletes until their third positive test, how could he suspend Foster for holding the stuff?

They will say that by believing his kid, Toledo did the only thing he could do.

“If there is a felony, the kid is gone . . . if there is fighting and violence, the kid is suspended for a game,” Toledo said. “But this case was different. DeShaun said he didn’t use it, and he said it didn’t belong to him, and I believe him.”

Toledo was challenged on his quote in Wednesday’s Times that implied it was OK that Foster had the dope as long as he wasn’t using it.

“I did not mean it that way,” said Toledo, and he deserves to be believed. “All I meant was, he said he didn’t own it or use it, and that was good enough for me.”

Foster’s credibility, on the other hand, is not great. Not only did he initially deny any involvement, his story about returning to his car from a concert to pick up a package for a friend--a box that turned out to contain dope--doesn’t jibe with police reports that he was discovered sitting in the front seat with the dope on his lap.

But we expect less from kids than we do from adults. Toledo’s attempt to save a kid and a season will turn out to be either brave or bone-headed.

“Anybody who has kids surely understands, this kid just made a mistake,” Toledo said. “What are you going to do, cut off his hand? Make it worse than it is? He’s already had his name splashed all over the newspaper, been embarrassed enough as it is.”

As if, when it comes to drugs and kids, there can ever be enough embarrassment.

Since Toledo brought up kids, I confess that I would have punished my three children differently.

Caught holding drugs? Caught in the same car with drugs? Caught in the same house with drugs? Suspended for the rest of their adolescence.

There is no gray area in my family. If the children are knowingly in the vicinity of drugs, then they have purchased them with their presence and are using them with their refusal to leave.

But that is me. Just as every child is different, so is every coach.

Bob Toledo has made many risky calls in his tenure here. His reverse passes and fourth-down bombs have been daring and delightful and sometimes even successful.

Consider this another flea-flicker; Toledo, to Foster, back to Toledo.

If Foster finishes his final season-and-a-half here as a good citizen, mark it as a first down.

If he doesn’t, the yardage lost will be considerable.

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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