Toledo faces questions for allowing Paus to play

  COURTNEY STEWART/Daily Bruin USC fans heckle UCLA
quarterback Cory Paus with signs Saturday.

By Joshua Mason
Daily Bruin Staff

If there was ever a trying time for head coach Bob Toledo, this
is it.

The decision to start Cory Paus against USC in light of recent
knowledge that the junior quarterback had been arrested on two
separate occasions for driving under the influence not only
reflects negatively on Toledo’s image, but it serves as a
telling sign for what has already been perceived as a rather
weakly-controlled Bruin football program.

“It’s easy for everyone else to make decisions and
to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do, but I’ve
got to do what I think is right for our football team,”
Toledo said. “Not knowing everything that I needed to know, I
did what I thought I had to do.”

What took the biggest hit may have been Toledo’s
credibility as an effective role model off the field.

After learning about Paus’ mistake late Thursday night,
Toledo was faced with a difficult choice. Either start a
quarterback who was prepared for the game and faced potential jail
time, or serve as disciplinarian and make a statement to the team
by benching Paus.

In a similar incident last week, Ohio State head coach Jim
Tressel suspended starting quarterback Steve Bellisari immediately
after learning that he had violated team policy by driving under
the influence.

“Team policy is to make the correct choices,” Ohio
State athletic director Andy Geiger said earlier in the week.
“The drug policy does not mandate a suspension for a first
incident. This (suspension) is at the coach’s
discretion.”

Toledo chose to do what he felt was best for his football team:
to prepare to beat USC.

Of course, the results were far from satisfying. Paus was pulled
early in the fourth quarter after failing to drive his team past
the 50-yard line. He finished the day 7-of-15 for 45 yards passing,
was sacked five times, threw two interceptions and failed to lead
his team to a single score. It was arguably the worst outing Paus
ever had.

The Bruins lost badly, but what took the biggest hit may have
been Toledo’s credibility as an effective role model off the
field. Despite knowledge of the charges late Thursday night, Toledo
said he was unable to research the situation to properly discipline
his quarterback.

“I wasn’t going to change the decision I had made
because I didn’t have enough information to change it,”
Toledo said. “He’s a grown man and he tried to take
care of business himself. He didn’t want it to interfere with
the football team, distract it earlier in the year, and
that’s why he did what he did.”

Of course, Tressel suspended his quarterback even before the
arraignment. Paus’ sentence had already been handed down, and
it wasn’t the first incident of that nature for the
quarterback.

“It happened a year before earlier, and nothing had
happened from it,” Paus said. “I understand the
position I’m in as the starting quarterback at UCLA, but
I’m already in trouble in real life. If nothing’s going
to happen from that, if no one’s going to know about it, then
I could take care of everything else the way that I felt like I
could.”

The most significant concern stems from the fact that Toledo
violated his own policy of suspending players who have brushes with
the law. Defensive end Asi Faoa was suspended last year for
fighting with a student, and Jermaine Lewis was suspended for a
similar incident during the 1998 season.

Only two weeks earlier, senior tailback DeShaun Foster had been
suspended for an “extra benefits” violation that
involved him driving a Ford Expedition leased by actor/director
Eric Lanueville. Though the Heisman contender had allegedly been
driving the vehicle for six weeks, Toledo was not aware of the
violation until the NCAA disclosed it to him. Two years ago, Toledo
faced a similar embarrassment when news broke that several of his
players were illegally using handicap-parking placards to park on
campus.

“It is our responsibility to tell them about things of
this nature,” freshman Craig Bragg said of what he has
learned from the recent incidents.