Neuheisel to UCLA: The Illinois Triangle

Illinois is playing in the Rose Bowl. Rick Neuheisel and UCLA are up to something big. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The timing surrounding Neuheisel’s hiring as UCLA’s head football coach is uncanny, even eerie. The last time Illinois played in the Rose Bowl, at the end of the 1983 season, Rick Neuheisel made life miserable for the Fighting Illini as a quarterback. Terry Donahue’s prize pupil earned MVP honors in the 1984 Rose Bowl, as the Bruins rolled to a 45-9 victory over an outmanned Big Ten champion from the Land of Lincoln.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, UCLA’s golden boy—now as the freshly-minted coach in Westwood—will cast a long and interesting shadow over another Granddaddy contested by the kids from Champaign. As cross-town rival USC prepares to play Illinois on UCLA’s home field this Tuesday, the enemy of Pete Carroll’s colossus decided to get some excitement Bruin in the L.A. sports pages. When UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero finally pulled the trigger and tabbed Slick Rick to become Karl Dorrell’s successor, a very loud statement reverberated throughout the Arroyo Seco and the shadows of the San Gabriel Mountains. Neuheisel’s return to UCLA has just made the Rose Bowl—both the game and the stadium itself—the centerpiece of what should be called “The Illinois Triangle.”

Two Rose Bowl games, played 24 years apart, will now be forever linked in the history books by the looming presence of Neuheisel and the coincidental presence of Illinois. When Neuheisel played the Illini in the first hours of 1984, a bloodbath ensued; nearly two and a half decades later, another news story involving Neuheisel is likely to cause even more carnage for Illinois on a New Year’s Day afternoon in Pasadena.

Why? It’s not that hard to understand: if USC was bored about the prospect of playing Illinois, the Trojans—awakened by this shot across the bow from their archrival—should find a fresh sense of urgency as they play the Illini in a few days. Mike White’s 1983 team received a pounding from an L.A.-based school, and Ron Zook’s 2007 crew now figures to encounter a similar fate against the other pigskin presence in the City of Angels.

Think this is just mere trivia, a pointless and minutiae-filled romp through the history books? Laugh if you want, but “The Illinois Triangle” shows that this move by Dan Guerrero is an attempt to re-establish UCLA as a football power that intends to not just match, but eclipse, the body of work compiled by Carroll and USC. Illinois just happens to be at the center of so many of these UCLA-USC comparisons that connect not just two Rose Bowl games, but the identities of the two programs and their head coaches.

It is purely coincidental that Karl Dorrell—the ex-coach in Westwood—caught two touchdown passes from Neuheisel in that 1984 Rose Bowl against Illinois. It is not coincidental, however, that the UCLA athletic department wanted a coach with a winning identity to replace Dorrell, a decent man and an okay coach who picked the wrong time to be the Boss Bruin. Had Dorrell been UCLA’s head coach during the Paul (I Just Can’t) Hackett era, he’d have been lauded in Los Angeles. But since Dorrell chose the Pete Carroll years for his UCLA tenure, he’s now out of the big leagues. That’s the way it works in show business, which—in L.A.—very much includes big-time college football. One Illinois-slaying hero has left the stage, but now the more successful figure from that 1984 Rose Bowl is on the job at UCLA.

”The Illinois Triangle” remains intact when one considers the condition of the UCLA and USC programs at the times of their encounters with Illinois in these far-apart Rose Bowls. The Bruins, when at their best, didn’t quite win six straight Pac-10 titles the way USC has recently done under Carroll (five, if you want to be really picky about things—USC was technically second to Washington State in 2002), but the fact remains that in the first half of the 1980s, UCLA was the money program in the Pac. The Bruins won three Granddaddies in four years, and usually in emphatic fashion. Donahue—the man who once ruled L.A. football and coached Neuheisel during those halcyon days—always had the right answers for Big Ten opponents who came to Pasadena.

It’s true that Michigan and Iowa became victims of Bruin boldness and brilliance during that four-year stretch, but one could fairly say that of those three Rosy romps for UCLA, the 36-point annihilation of Illinois—yes, the one led by Neuheisel himself—was the sweetest one by far. The unranked Bruins, with four losses and a tie, thoroughly humiliated the 10-1 and No. 4 Illini. That improbable yet devastating rout cemented the aura surrounding the UCLA program in the mid-80s, because it conveyed the undeniable impression that even when supremely vulnerable, the Bruins could call forth confidence and summon up supreme swagger against a highly-touted opponent in a very big game. One Rose Bowl win over Illinois in 1984 captured the greatness of UCLA football. Now, with USC oozing superiority just before another Rose Bowl game involving those unfortunate Illini, UCLA has brought Rick Neuheisel back into the mix. It’s a clear attempt—and a bold, brilliant one at that—to not just steal headlines and some Trojan thunder, but to match Troy’s tidal wave of triumphs and trophies.

Yes, you have lil’ ol’ Illinois standing in the middle of history in these final days before the 2008 Rose Bowl: the Illini, already the recipient of one Rose Bowl beatdown 24 years ago, seem to be in store for another. Neuheisel’s emergence as UCLA’s new head coach is creating a war—no, not with Ron Zook’s team, but with the team that is about to play Illinois on Tuesday. What happens between the white lines in a few days will receive an extra degree of scrutiny in Los Angeles, because every Angelino will be talking about how USC fared against Illinois relative to Rick Neuheisel. Much more importantly, Neuheisel will use the aftermath of the 2008 Rose Bowl to, in one way or another, begin building his program to the point where it can once again roll to victory on New Year’s Day… instead of the hated Trojan Empire of College Football. “The Illinois Triangle,” adequately explained, reveals how this hire by Dan Guerrero is primarily a response to USC and its recent ascendancy under Pete Carroll.

This brings us to the final, fascinating aspect of this breaking story, just a few hours after it became official. In so many ways (minus the penchant for routinely corrupt or shady behavior, of course), Neuheisel and Carroll are the same. In hiring Neuheisel, UCLA is trying to be what USC already is. Put differently, UCLA is trying to match USC in a stylistically similar way.

It’s not exactly a secret that when Carroll was hired as USC’s head coach back in 2001, the Trojans were bringing aboard a man who was less than a fully-proven commodity as a head coach. Sure, Carroll was a great motivator and, moreover, a brilliant mind on one side of the ball, but it was an open question as to whether he could carry the water as a head coach in a mammoth market. Neuheisel—an offensive guru who will lock horns with Carroll in some delicious battles over the next few years—has more credentials as a head coach than Carroll did back in 2001, but the fact remains that Slick Rick’s college resume—at Colorado and Washington—isn’t as glowing as one might think. For all of his successful seasons, it has to be said that Neuheisel’s best years in Boulder and Seattle were compiled on the strength of players recruited by other head coaches (Bill McCartney and Jim Lambright, respectively). Neuheisel made the most of the talent he inherited, but Slick Rick quickly proved unable to sustain programs over the long haul. Even more distressing is the fact that Neuheisel accumulated numerous violations at both schools, soiling his own reputation and earning the “Slick Rick” moniker beyond any reasonable doubt. All in all, the Rick Neuheisel of 2007—except for that inconvenient little word called “corruption”—is not too different from the Pete Carroll of 2001.

The Neuheisel-Carroll comparisons go deeper, however… and this time, on matters pertaining strictly to football and, more specifically, the realm of motivation.

While Carroll is always looking for ways to lighten up the mood around his program, Neuheisel—who may or may not strum his guitar in an attempt to keep his UCLA players free and loose—is similarly inclined to motivate players by creating a culture of energy and liberation, the hallowed formula for California confidence. This hire has an undeniable amount of appeal and wisdom because Neuheisel’s personality—much like Carroll’s over at USC—is a psychologically compatible match for the city of Los Angeles. Neuheisel is a player’s coach who will create a culture of competition at UCLA. A still-young head coach possesses the iconic looks and attitude that fit the local environment, and he’ll be able to sell UCLA football in ways few other men ever could have done at this particular point in time. If anyone has a chance of doing in Westwood what Carroll has already achieved across town in the shadows of the L.A. Coliseum, it’s Neuheisel.

If you couldn’t appreciate it before, you should be able to now: USC and UCLA are engaged in a massive and cutthroat turf war, and Illinois is just caught in the middle of it. The Trojans are hoping to play their 2008 home games in the Rose Bowl stadium, but if UCLA says no, one thing’s for certain: USC will still play two games in the Rose Bowl in 2008. One will occur against Neuheisel’s Bruins at the end of the 2008 regular season. On that day, UCLA just might be in position to win the Pac-10 and earn a berth in the 2009 Rose Bowl game. The opponent for Neuheisel might just be the team that will be next year’s Big Ten preseason favorite: yup, you guessed it—Illinois.

Ah, but before USC plays UCLA in the Rose Bowl later in 2008, the year begins with the Trojans playing the very same Illini in the venerable old ballpark. USC will try to do what a man named Neuheisel did 24 years before: annihilate Illinois with an avalanche of points and a tsunami of swagger.

What does Illinois have to do with the hiring of UCLA’s newest and coolest golden-boy head coach? On one hand, nothing; but in another sense, everything. USC, UCLA and Rick Neuheisel—brought together by Dan Guerrero’s bold move on the final weekend of 2007—are all part of a place even more fascinating than Bermuda. Today’s big college football story completes “The Illinois Triangle.”

Let’s just hope, for the record, that Neuheisel has learned from past mistakes and won’t stain the UCLA program the way he marred the landscape in both Colorado and Washington. Otherwise, this talented but tainted coach won’t clean up his reputation. Then, you’ll see that other, more infamous triangle come into the picture again.