The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 67

PEPPER RODGERS ban, don't be nervous. Just remember: thera are 800 million Chinese who donV give a damn about this scribbles notes and Xs ind Os on the large yellow-note pad in his lap. He retires at midnight, but five hours later it will start all over again, In entertaining friends by singing college fight songs. But these are quiet, nights at the Rodgers household because football is here. There are fewer 1 moments now with his wife, Judy, and their four children sons Ricky, 18, (a freshman at Kansas); Kyle, 14, and Kelly, 8, and daughter Terri, 17.

It is close to sundown When he returns home, long after supper with the team. He takes another dip in the pool, then engages in still another hobby r- making homemade ice cream. In the late evening, as he watches television, he coach such as Woody Haves of Ohio State. "If I did that," he said, "I wouldn't be myself. In coaching, you can't try to act the part of someone else.

You have to do your own thing, to be yourself." Since last March, Rodg-v ers has lost 30 pounds, mostly the result of dieting and tennis. He plays tennis well and often even on mornings of game days. He also plays golf and chess. Another pasttime is pop music. His home and office stereos are alive with "top 40" albums and tapes Glen Campbell, Aretha Franklin, O.C.

Smith, Ray Conniff and he delights "The idea Is that 80 minds are 'better than one," said Rodgers. "I don't want all the credit we win and all the blame when we lose. I'm willing to share." Practice sessions under appear almost as much cerebral as physical, and the shouting by the coaches is more encouraging than critical. "We try to make practice as enjoyable as possible," he said. "That's the only way you'll generate enthusiasm from your players." Rodgers is informal, but not frivolous, with his players off the field.

He admits his personality will not permit him to play the role of a harsh, dictatorial Few college football coaches are as 1 1-schooled in offense as Rodgers. He played and coached under Bobby Dodd at Georgia Tech, then served as an assistant to Ray Graves at Florida, Ben Martin at the Air Force Academy and Tommy Prothro at UCLA. One of his theories, borrowed from Dodd, is to give his players the opportunity of suggesting ideas, of contributing to the game plan. going to Hve Rodgers' reputation, both as an assistant and a head coach, has been linked with good quarterbacks Gary Beban, Steve Spurrier, Richie Mayo and Bobby Douglass. One of them, Beban, re- that Rodgers excelled at giving quarterbacks a sense of ease and self-assurance.

Gary told of an incident shortly before the TJH6 Rose Bowl game, when Rodgers was UCLA's back field assistant. "I was pretty nervous," he said, "and Pepper came up to me in the dressing room and said, 'Now, Be nnr LvU I i like you're forever." fensive line, the receivers, lie? says the hitting has been excellent. "I can't 'remember a team that has hit better than this one," he says. UCLA, he says, will have a "good" team. How good? Rodgers wishes he knew.

But he will find out in a hurry. After Pitt (which expects to improve on its 5-5 record of last year) come Texas and Michigan two teams ranked among the top five nationally. He knows the Pacific 8 campaign will be formidable, too, "If we finish low in this conference," he told a group of writers the other day, "then we've got an all-time conference." Rarely a day passes when Rodgers isn't asked what the loss of running back James McAIister will mean to his team. "I hope our team will be stimulated enough to play better than we did in the spring," he says. "We're conditioned to losing players.

Whenever we lose any player, the guy who takes his place always thinks he can do as well. This is a positive attitude we try to encourage at UCLA." Relaxing later in his office, Rodgers puffs on a pipe as he talks about the season. He is asked if he always smokes a pipe. "No," he says. "Only hen I'm nervous." mum I Mil 4 ears Vils of These Cars: mm Compact Buicks, Cliev.

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Third Burbooni KJovi Stars and top Karate Proi Admission: $255 PIhjF.E.T. ach ind old lira il t- re KaiFJEX each and old on is SEP? 1 Mr NLA- 10? 53 hJ Your Choice of Sizes: 6.00x13 Blackwall 6.30x13 Blackwall nmt Mi I i is Continued from First Page cropped hair. He led his players onto the field by performing a double somersault. "Four years with Pepper Rodgers," wrote a columnist in the Lawrence (Kan.) Daily Journal-World. "It was like open- ing a box of Cracker Jack every day Rodgers describes himself as a "surprise guy." He delights in turning hotly debated subjects such as hair length into an amusing exchange of ideas.

lie wears his gray-speckled hair closely cropped, he says, "because I'm anti-establishment. I told my wife I'm going to keep my hair short because I enjoy being different." At practice the other day, somebody noticed tufts of long hair flowing from beneath the helmets of numerous Bruin players. Rodgers was asked what his policy on hair was. "Well," he said, "I'm not going to force my players to wear their hair long." The scene is Spaulding Field, shortly before practice. "Who wants to bet me?" says Rodgers.

"Who says I can't come close to hitting that helmet over there with this football." There are no challengers among the bystanders, but Rodgers decides to test hi3 accuracy anyway. Standing near the bleachers, he hurls a spiral toward a helmet lying rear the goal post, about 40 yards away. The ball lands about 10 inches from the helmet. "Not bad!" says a wit-didn't ness. "I'm glad I The coach then picks up another football and throws a couple of jump passes.

Someone reminds him that those were the kind of passes he threw for Georgia Tech to beat West Virginia, 41-19, in the 1954 Sugar Bowl game. "That's right," he says. "Those were the only kind of passes they let me throw. My range was about five yards." His demeanor is affable, folksy and carefree. But beneath the "hang-loose" exterior, there is a serious side.

It surfaces as he relaxes on a sofa in his office, pondering the season which begins Saturday night against Pitt's Panthers at the Coliseum. "We've got to have better quarterbacking than we did in the spring," he says. "We can't ever hope to win our conference or finish in the top two or three unless our quarter-backing He a 1 a the Bruins' strengths the defense, especially the interior and linebackers; the of-' Flores to Start as QB of Bruins Mike Flores, a transfer from Santa Monica College, will be UCLA's starting quarterback against Pittsburgh Saturday night at the Coliseum. Coach Pepper Rodgers said Wednesday he has chosen Flores over Clay Gallagher, a transfer from Glendale College, although he added that Gallagher, the better ball handler, will start if the Bruins open the prae in poor field position. In addition, Marv Ken-dricks, UCLA's leading rusher last season, has improved after a slow start in pre-seasoh practice and will open it one of the running liiicks.

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4t uicks, Yolks, A a. fi bi fe WLJJ-JmJ ten LU Pepper knows what pressure is all about. He surmounted it as a player, particularly a3 a Georgia Tech sophomore when he booted the winning field goal to beat Baylor, 17-14, in the 1952 Orange Bowl. But it contributed to a shattering defeat when he was Kansas' head coach in the 1969 Orange Bowl, where the Jayhawks lost to Penn State, 15-14, after they were cited for fielding 12 defenders on a crucial conversion try. But Rodgers says the "most pressure" he ever confronted was when he played third clarinet in a school band.

"I had been faking it all the way. I was no good," he recalled. "Then one night the first two clarine tists got sick and I had to do a solo. If I had known the first two were sick, I would have been sick, too. That's pressure." Rodgers also is a man of homespun philosophy.

"I'm an optimist," he says. "I've played a lot of golf against guys who were better than I was. I didn't always win, but after it was over, I still thought I could have." Or: "It's nowhere near as much fun to lose as it is to win. But you find the sun does come up the next day." His philosophy of life? "To live every day like you're going to die tomorrow and. work every day ORDEH YOUR IUICK fOR ADVANCED DtUVfRT 1972 ELECTRA RIVIERA SKYLARK fUUY EQUIPT.

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