Morning briefing

Game was an elixir

for Bruins

On the morning of Monday, Jan. 2, 1984, with UCLA set to play Illinois in the Rose Bowl, Bruins Coach Terry Donahue got a sickening feeling when he showed up at the team’s pre-game meal at the Beverly Hilton.

“Half the team was missing,” Donahue recalled Monday. “I asked [trainer] Ducky Drake where everybody was, and he said they were sick.”

Food poisoning, or maybe a massive flu bug, had ravaged Donahue’s team. And the sickest was starting quarterback Rick Neuheisel.

“I was in full panic mode,” Donahue said. “We put all the sick kids on one bus, and the healthy ones on another. And we put Rick by himself in the back seat of a car -- with a bucket. We didn’t want the rest of the team to know just how sick he was.”

After Neuheisel arrived at the Rose Bowl, he saw his father, Dick, who told him to suck it up.

He did, and so did his teammates. Donahue said only three starters were unable to play, and the Bruins upset the 10-1 Illini, 45-9, with Neuheisel being selected the game’s most valuable player. He completed 22 of 31 passes for 298 yards and four touchdowns -- two going to receiver Karl Dorrell.

Uneasy feeling

Going into that 1984 Rose Bowl game, UCLA junior Steve Bono was sidelined because of a shoulder injury, so the second-string quarterback was sophomore David Norrie.

“I had the hotel room next to Rick’s and at 4 a.m. I could hear him throwing up,” Norrie recalled. “Not that I was afraid to play, but I hadn’t had many reps in practice and I remember thinking, ‘Oh . . .’ ”

Trivia time

What football powerhouse did Neuheisel, as a fifth-year senior, face in his first start at UCLA? Hint: This team had won the Southeastern Conference title the year before.

Streetcar story

Broadcaster Stu Nahan, who died last week, loved telling stories. Jerry Clark, executive director of the Southern California Sports Broadcasters, passed along one of Nahan’s favorites.

Nahan worked as a streetcar conductor while playing goalie for the Los Angeles Monarchs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. At the Pico-Rimpau streetcar turnaround, Nahan, after many failed attempts, finally persuaded the young woman working in the hot dog stand there to go to a movie with him that night.

The same day, there was a rowdy group of schoolgirls on his streetcar, and he told them they would have to quiet down. A red-haired girl in the group, in an act of defiance, stuck out her tongue at Nahan.

After his shift, Nahan went to pick up his date, and guess who answered the door? It was the red-haired girl on the streetcar -- his date’s little sister.

Here’s Johnny

Nahan told another story at the November meeting of the sportscasters group. When he was a sports anchor at Channel 4 he’d often play liar’s poker with people who worked on the “Tonight Show,” which was taped in the same building. Liar’s poker is played by using the eight serial numbers on dollar bills and involves bluffing.

One afternoon Johnny Carson walked by the group and asked to play. He played one hand, and won impressively.

“When he said, ‘Seven sevens,’ he was not bluffing. His dollar bill had seven sevens.”

Trivia answer

Neuheisel, a former walk-on, started UCLA’s 1983 season opener against Georgia. In 1982, the Bulldogs, led by Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker, had gone undefeated until losing to Penn State, 27-23, in the Sugar Bowl. But on a rainy night in Georgia’s Sanford Stadium, the Bruins and Neuheisel gave the Bulldogs all they could handle before losing, 19-8.

And finally

Charles Barkley better start getting in shape. The Boston Celtics improved to 26-3 by drubbing the Lakers, 110-91, on Sunday night. And last week on TNT, Barkley said he’d walk from the network’s studio in Atlanta to his home in Phoenix if the Celtics win 72 games.

“In a Speedo,” he added.

larry.stewart@latimes.com