Bruins Rose Bowl eligible

You stick out your right hand to greet the only UCLA player to score a touchdown.

Craig Sheppard pulls back. His right hand is too sore. He offers the other one.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he says.

You wonder if one of the Bruins’ main offensive weapons in their 16-0 victory over Oregon will enjoy a postgame celebration.

Sheppard says he’s going back to his apartment to watch television while taping ice bags to his sore groin.

“I guess I’m not that much of a partyer, sir,” he says.

You ask one of the Bruins’ most productive players if he is still paying his own tuition, room and board.

The non-scholarship kid flashes a full-ride smile.

“Yes, sir, but it’s OK,” he says.

It’s OK?

“I’ve been blessed with a chance to play college football, sir,” he says. “I don’t need anything else.”

And so, underneath the clutter of another confusing UCLA afternoon, a gem appeared.

Indeed, in what may be the final days of Karl Dorrell’s reign, there exists clear evidence of something done right.

That something is Sheppard, a slightly built sophomore walk-on running back who epitomizes each of the three most famous words in UCLA football history.

He’s gutty. He’s little. And goodness, he’s certainly a Bruin.

That’s a cliche to most, but a resume for Sheppard, who began the season as a sixth-stringer and has wound up being an offensive lifeline, gaining nearly five yards per carry in the last three games, highlighted by his game-clinching, 20-yard scoring run in the fourth quarter Saturday.

“It was a really big hole, sir,” he says. “Anybody could have run through it.”

Sheppard is quick to call every adult “sir” or “ma’am.”

He is also quick to tell you he is here only by the grace of his embattled head coach.

Last season, you see, he quit the team because he thought it wasn’t worth it.

Who pays $20,000 a year for the right to get your head kicked in?

This is what the San Marcos kid thought when, during his second training camp in the spring of 2006, he tearfully told Dorrell that he was leaving.

“I just couldn’t take it anymore,” he recalls.

Four months later, he was back at Dorrell’s desk, begging to return for this season.

“Being away from football was killing me,” Sheppard says. “I missed the camaraderie, I missed the bond.”

His pitch to Dorrell was simple. “I told him I would do anything he needed if he would let me back on the team,” Sheppard recalls. “I would mop the floors if that’s what it took.”

Dorrell thought about it for a couple of weeks, and finally relented.

The kid wasn’t big enough at barely 6 feet 1, 190 pounds. But he was fast enough, and, after all this, certainly seemed strong enough.

“I don’t want this to sound like I’m bragging, but I’m a worker,” Sheppard says.

No, he didn’t begin this season mopping floors. It was worse. The Bruins regulars were mopping the floors with him.

He was on the scout team with a bad hamstring and no chance. The tailback depth chart in the Bruins media guide listed five guys, and he wasn’t one of them.

“I knew I’d have to work my way back,” Sheppard says. “But I was appreciative of everything.”

By the fifth game, he was promoted to special teams. By the ninth game, he stepped around all the injured running backs to carry the ball.

On Saturday, he helped spark an offense that gained 40 yards in the first half by gaining 51 yards himself in the second half.

None of it was flashy. All of it was bruising. And by Hollywood standards, little of it was rewarding.

He didn’t do any sort of dance after his touchdown, instead choosing to disappear on the sidelines. “I’m not really the celebrating kind,” he says.

Afterward, I am the only person to interview him, and when is the last time that has happened with the only guy to score a touchdown in a major-college game?

“That’s OK, I’m really not much for publicity,” he says.

Outside, his parents were ejected from the tunnel area by Rose Bowl security guards despite their polite reminder that they were waiting for their son, and when is the last time that has happened?

“My son is not a real big fella,” says his father.

“Except for his heart,” says his mother.

The truly happy ending to this story would be the awarding of a scholarship to Sheppard on a team that can give 85 of them.

Except Dorrell is in no position to hand out promises for next season when he is not promised next season.

And then there’s the matter of Sheppard’s being perhaps the first walk-on in history to refuse to push for a scholarship.

“I am lucky my parents have the financial means to pay for school,” he says. “There are people here who need scholarships worse than I do.”

But what if he were offered one?

“The only way I would accept one is if certain walk-ons receive scholarships before me,” he says.

And those would be?

“The walk-ons who didn’t quit,” he says.

You leave the interview with Craig Sheppard vowing to check on the progress of his sore right hand.

When it’s healed, you want to shake it.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.