Toledo Enjoys It, but It Won’t Last

UCLA has its first new football coach in 21 years, and Bob Toledo wanted to make a few changes. So he decided to start with the basic stuff.

The uniforms are new, or at least different from the ones Terry Donahue saw last. They feature a return to gothic numerals, shaded in blue to make them stand out for television. The officials are also going to appreciate that to help them make holding calls.

A new Toledo-inspired Bruin helmet will have UCLA written in script as usual, but it will be larger than in the past.

Also, UCLA players will wear white shoes instead of black, and you know how important that can be to put everybody in a good mood.

Toledo has overseen a complete overhaul of the UCLA locker room that includes fresh paint, new carpet and gold lockers with blue trim. The names of UCLA’s 67 first-team All-Americans are listed on a gold plaque, and the seven football jerseys retired by the school are framed and hung on a wall.

That’s quite an impressive start, all right, with five weeks still to go before his firstgame. As a matter of fact, we don’t know yet whether Toledo can coach, but he’s sure got a future as an interior decorator.

Make no mistake about it, the 1996 UCLA Bruins are wholly Toledo.

Besides new uniform numbers, new helmets, new shoes, new lockers, new paint and a new carpet, the new coach has installed a new offense and a new defense, taught by some new assistants with new ideas.

New news is good news at UCLA, at least for now, mainly because the Bruins have yet to take one step in their new white shoes on a schedule that you wouldn’t possibly wish on your worst enemy, maybe even anybody from USC.

The Bruins open at Tennessee, and after taking a week off against Northeast Louisiana, they play at Michigan, at Oregon and then at home against Arizona State.

That’s two national powers and two of the top teams in the Pacific-10. What’s more, five of UCLA’s first seven games are on the road.

This isn’t a schedule, it’s a sentence. After that stretch is over, Toledo may be forced to make one more change and switch the school colors, to black and blue.

If the Bruins survive it, they’ve got a decent chance to finish the season with their gothic numerals intact.

Toledo said that what he is going through right now at UCLA is his honeymoon. He said everybody likes him, nobody is saying anything bad about him and everything is totally upbeat and positive.

He was asked how long he thought this honeymoon would last. Toledo said one game.

Anybody for one quarter?

There isn’t much to compare the honeymoon to in recent UCLA history. In his first season as coach in 1976, Donahue began 9-0-1 before losing to USC and then to Alabama in the Liberty Bowl.

Chances are the closest UCLA will come to a bowl game this year is on a tour bus, but you have to admire Toledo’s approach.

It’s a new era around Westwood, and 50-year-old Bob Toledo is trying to make it as fresh and new as he can. He said he admires and respects Donahue, but insists he isn’t anything like Donahue.

Instead, Toledo emphasizes the differences. If Donhaue was conservative in his offensive approach, Toledo is a gambler. He runs more trick plays than you will see in a crooked card game.

If Donahue favored a containment defense, Toledo likes to attack.

If Donahue was guarded in his remarks, Toledo is loose, quotable and open--right now, anyway. He certainly could change, and Donahue already has warned him about those nasty, poison-pens in the local media.

By all accounts, Toledo has the ego of a can of soup. That probably helped him out a little bit when the Bruins talked up Gary Barnett of Northwestern, Bill Snyder of Kansas State and assistant coach Greg Robinson of the Denver Broncos as their first choices to replace Donahue.

But UCLA eventually settled on Toledo, who as a 5-foot-10 quarterback at San Francisco State in 1967 threw 45 touchdown passes as a senior.

Along the way, Toledo has coached at Riordan High in San Francisco, UC Riverside, the University of Pacific, USC, Oregon and Texas A&M.; He joined Donahue’s staff as offensive coordinator two years ago.

Now it’s his turn to run the show, and Toledo said he’s more than ready to try it his way. When the UCLA varsity reports for practice Aug. 15, Toledo has a surprise ready for them. He’s throwing a team party on the beach at Malibu.

No one can be sure just how this will help UCLA beat Tennessee and Michigan, but what the heck? Maybe the Bruins can just whack them with surfboards or something.