With Neuheisel, we'll always have Pasadena
JOHN MCGRATH; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Late last December, UCLA’s presence on Washington’s home football schedule suddenly was upgraded from just another game to a Can’t Miss spectacle.
Rick Neuheisel, as rumored, had accepted the Bruins head coaching job, guaranteeing a return to the campus that regarded him as a polarizing presence on his first day and as a demonized figure on his last. Regardless what you thought of his work on the field – or his penchant for stirring up controversy off it – Mister Golden Hair was always good theater.
But in the more than 10 months since Neuheisel’s hiring at UCLA paved the way for a reunion with the school he fought in court, some events – well, several events – have combined to make his visit less compelling than it once seemed.
The Huskies are winless. Tyrone Willingham is on his way out at Washington. Scott Woodward has been appointed the full-time replacement for Todd Turner, the athletic director who helped lead the all-too-brief search that landed Willingham. The determination to get this one right has produced at least 15 plausible candidates, and as soon as I attach a period to the end of this sentence, the list could well be expanded to 18 or 20.
In other words, the focus on Montlake has changed from Neuheisel’s stormy tenure as the first Huskies coach of the 21st century to the challenge of finding somebody able to make the team competitive again at some point during the second decade of the 21st century.
Neuheisel’s focus has changed, too. During a pleasant teleconference chat Monday with some of the same reporters whose questions used to invite replies as cold as ice, he joked a little and philosophized a lot.
“For me this thing, if there’s any emotion, it’s between the fans and myself,” he said. “I just want the fans to know that I am truly sorry for the messiness of how this shook out.”
So there. Neuheisel not only said the magic word – “sorry” – he said it in several ways.
“Certainly it was turbulent in my departure,” he went on. “But I truly respect the program. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to coach there. I’m proud of what we accomplished on the field. Some games I wish we could have back, but we can’t.
“I learned a great deal from my experience, and hopefully I made some long-lasting relationships from the experience.”
Neuheisel realizes he made some other relationships – just as long-lasting – from the “experience,” an all-inclusive word that sums up his roller-coaster reign at Washington with a merciful brevity.
“The assistant coaches have asked me what I’m wearing Saturday,” said Neuheisel, “so they won’t wear the same thing.”
Will the scene at Husky Stadium turn ugly?
Of course it will. Everything about the home finale – from the 7:26 p.m. kickoff, to the damp and frigid mid-November weather, to the Bruins’ expected two-touchdown victory – portends the ugliest evening since George Steinbrenner was firing Yankees administrators on Christmas Eve.
But there’s a difference between ugly and dangerous. When Neuheisel jogs toward the visitors’ sideline before opening kickoff, he can expect to hear a raucous chorus of boos, jeers and hisses. And then?
Once Huskies fans let go on Neuheisel, they should let it go. OK, a round or two of a stadium taunt – “Rick Stinks!” is the family newspaper version – would give some depth to the homecoming.
Beyond that, allow the players to play, and the coaches to coach.
As Neuheisel put it: “With respect to the turbulent stuff, so much has been said, it’s probably best to leave it there.”
This isn’t like a baseball game, where Alex Rodriguez returned to Seattle in a Rangers uniform and was announced to the crowd, over the public-address system, each time he approached the batter’s box.
A personal appeal to the Husky Stadium video-board operator: Use some restraint on the Neuheisel close-ups. The less he’s seen on the big board, the less chance there will be for somebody in the stands to act stupid.
It’s a chance that crowd-security officials take seriously. When Alabama’s Nick Saban returned to LSU last Saturday, he was accompanied by a handful of state policemen. By the time Saban approached Les Miles for the postgame handshake, Saban’s police detail had swelled to 12. And Saban guided LSU to a share of a national championship.
“My memories for this place are positive, not negative,” Saban insisted after the Crimson Tide clinched the SEC West with an overtime win. “I didn’t leave LSU to go to Alabama. I left LSU to go to Miami.”
Uh, Nick? It’s an argument you can’t win, so don’t even try. You left LSU for the Dolphins, after you insisted you weren’t interested in an NFL job. Then you returned to Baton Rouge with an Alabama team that beat LSU. Recalling positive memories was, to borrow Humphrey Bogart’s phrase from “Casablanca,” poor salesmanship.
At least Neuheisel, who took the Huskies to the 2001 Rose Bowl, didn’t attempt to rationalize his role in a drama that has become as dated as propeller planes on a foggy runway.
“Husky football is a great entity and a great program,” he said. “I believe great things are in store for it, and I believe that also is the case for UCLA, too.”
Almost six years since he coached his final game for the Huskies, Rick Neuheisel has moved on. It’s time the rest of us do the same.
john.mcgrath@thenewstribune.com">
john.mcgrath@thenewstribune.com
