Toledo Needs to Call an Audible and Suspend His Quarterback

For six years, while embracing troubled players even as they disrespected and betrayed him, Bob Toledo has spoken of his UCLA football team as family.

It’s tough-love time.

Today. Now. The worst possible moment. The best possible moment.

Toledo needs to suspend quarterback Cory Paus from today’s game against USC for failing to reveal a summer drunk-driving conviction that might have changed the team’s approach to both him and the season.

Allowing Paus to play today, only two days after he finally acknowledged his conviction after it was uncovered by the media, would be stating emphatically that final results are more important than personal responsibility.

Suspend him, even though, with running back DeShaun Foster now permanently ineligible, the offense could be a circus of confusion.

Suspend him, even though, after three consecutive losses, the season could collapse like a wind-battered big top.

Suspend him, even though it would likely mean their most hated rival will dance around that tangled heap for the next 12 months.

Easy for us to say, but it’s not about losing. It’s about a lesson.

Despite six years of Toledo’s most sincere efforts, some of his players are still awkwardly grasping for this lesson as they would a squirming fumble.

Say it so they can hear it.

There is no team without trust .

This is not about suspending Paus for pleading no contest to drunken-driving charges last summer, reports of which didn’t surface until Thursday.

The courts have already done that, as he will serve four days in jail this winter, among other penalties.

This is not about suspending Paus because he officially broke any team rules.

UCLA has a three-strike substance-abuse policy, and, counting Paus’ reckless driving conviction in March of 2000, he has “only” messed up twice.

This is about something more difficult to enforce than a rule, but something even more dangerous to ignore.

This is about honesty.

Paus is the second UCLA star in two seasons to fail to tell Toledo about a lawbreaking incident until it was discovered by the media.

He is the second star to place the program at risk while making one of football’s smartest coaches look clueless.

The first time was last fall, when word of Foster’s guilty plea on a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge leaked on local talk radio.

Foster initially denied it. Then, one week before the season opener against Alabama, and only when confronted by his coach, Foster came clean.

His punishment? Nothing.

Toledo did not suspend him for the Alabama game because he said Foster had already paid his $250 fine and had claimed he was only holding the marijuana for a friend.

“Anybody who has kids surely understands, this kid just made a mistake,” Toledo said. “What are you going to do, cut off his hand?”

So what does Foster do? A year later, he cuts off Toledo’s hand.

He foolishly accepts the loan of a car from a middle-aged Hollywood guy, even though the outcome was as predictable as one of the “B” movies that Eric Laneuville has directed.

Foster attends a school located smack in the middle of Southern California’s car culture. He plays for an athletic department where the two biggest scandals before this season--Jim Harrick and handicapped parking--both involved automobiles.

Yet he still doesn’t check with anybody before accepting a free ride?

What was he thinking?

The answer, of course, was that he was not thinking.

Would it have been different if, last fall, Bob Toledo made him think?

Who knows?

It seems clear, though, that somebody learned something from Foster’s marijuana misdemeanor last fall.

That somebody was Paus.

The lesson was that you can hide something from the UCLA coach and get away with it.

Toledo said he was stunned when given the news Thursday.

He had no idea that Paus was arrested in June, or appeared in court in July, pleading no contest to charges that he was driving near campus with a blood-alcohol level of allegedly .10, above the legal limit of .08.

Think of how that would have affected UCLA’s season preparations if Toledo knew.

More important, think of how they could have helped Paus, a likable guy who has quietly and admirably endured a tough season on the field, obtain treatment if he needed it.

It gets worse. The day before the season opener against Alabama, Paus was formally sentenced to the jail time, plus community service, plus a fine, plus a mandatory appearance in an alcohol-diversion program.

The day before the season opener.

While he sat in team meetings in a Tuscaloosa hotel.

Trying to be a leader while his thoughts were surely elsewhere.

Toledo, who has shown he cares about his kids to the point of distraction, was owed an explanation.

The Bruin program, on the verge of its best opportunity in nearly 40 years for a national title, was owed an explanation.

Today, publicly, Toledo can do the explaining.

Three years after he seemingly lost control of the team during the debacle in Miami. Two years after the handicapped-parking scandal. One year after going lightly on Foster.

Amid the first serious questions of his ability to manage a big-time program in a distraction-filled town, today Bob Toledo can suspend Cory Paus and explain exactly how it is done.

That town is listening.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.