Neuheisel is the new salesman in Westwood
Days of UCLA giving up, giving in and giving way to USC are over
 | Former Washington head coach Rick Neuheisel has taken over the program at UCLA. Matt Hayes says the days of UCLA playing second fiddle in Los Angeles are over. |
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Think he'll concede and allow what has happened the last decade in Los Angeles to continue snowballing?
Think he'll give up now — or anytime soon ?
"This is where it all begins," Neuheisel says.
Hamani Stevens should already have signed with Oregon on this day, should already have become another elite high school player to publicly declare in what has become an annual public orgy. The parties, the press conferences, the national television exposure. Who could've imagined — thanks, in large part, to Al Gore's Internet — what national signing day has become?
Certainly not Hamani Stevens. He can't get Neuheisel off the phone and can't make a decision. UCLA gave up on him months ago, long before Neuheisel had returned to his alma mater to replace Karl Dorrell and bring the fight to crosstown rival and college football king USC.
The four-star offensive lineman never officially visited UCLA but developed a strong relationship with Neuheisel in his month on the job and now can't say no. Stevens' mother and twin brother want him to go to UCLA, a 100-mile drive from his home in Hemet, Calif., and much closer than Eugene, Ore.
Twice during every-hour-on-the-hour conversations, Stevens says he's going to UCLA. In the last call, just before noon, he tells Neuheisel he is signing with Oregon.
"Hug your mother," Neuheisel says. "She raised a terrific son."
The reality is, losing one player shouldn't define UCLA's entire recruiting class, a group that most analysts rank among the best in the nation. But losing one player can lead to losing another and another — and the next thing you know, the team across town has won six straight Pac-10 titles.
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Neuheisel hangs up with Stevens and stares out the window of his office, still full of unpacked moving boxes and a card given to him by his wife, Sue, when he accepted the job. The message printed on the front of the card: Never let the odds keep you from doing what you know in your heart you were meant to do.
The night before signing day, Neuheisel stays late at the office before making the short drive to the Angeleno, a groovy old boutique hotel on the outskirts of Bel-Air that has served as home since he was named coach in late December. His wife and three sons are still living in Baltimore, where he was offensive coordinator for the Ravens, and Neuheisel admits he's working on "a rotation of four sets of clothes." And it ain't pretty.
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He's coming to Westwood.
"How can you sleep after that?" Neuheisel says.
And it only gets better. While talking to Moutra, who has been pulled in different directions the past few days by coaches at Cal and Oregon, Neuheisel gets a voice mail from linebacker Patrick Larimore.
"I am pumped and ready to kill," Larimore says, his voice eerily intense.
Six hours later, Neuheisel returns the call when Larimore's letter of intent spins off the fax machine in his office.
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"Tell Katie it's time to play the piano," Neuheisel says.
Just a week earlier, Neuheisel was in Larimore's home in Newhall — a suburb of Los Angeles — doing what he would do with every other UCLA recruit: Meeting face to face with the player and his family to ease concerns about the coaching transition and to secure a recruiting class built largely by defensive coordinator/recruiting guru DeWayne Walker.
It was there that Neuheisel met Katie Larimore, Patrick's shy young sister who balked at playing the piano when Neuheisel asked. So he sat down and tickled the ivories to loosen the tension.
"Knocked out a few from my third-grade piano lessons," Neuheisel says.
Sure enough, the Larimore family was sold.
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