Toledo tackles recruiting tactics
By Daily Bruin Staff
Feb. 11, 2002 9:00 p.m.
 DANIEL WONG/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Bob
Toledo has responded to Rick Neuheisel’s complaints.
By Hannah Gordon
Daily Bruin Reporter
Stones are being thrown all over the Pac-10, and if the coaches
are not careful, everyone will end up in shattered glass.
UCLA declined to comment Friday, after Washington head football
coach Rick Neuheisel complained about negative recruiting around
the conference, specifically by Oregon and UCLA last week.
UCLA head coach Bob Toledo responded in the Seattle Times
yesterday.
“If you live in a glass house, you shouldn’t throw
rocks, you know what I mean,” Toledo said. “We never
had a problem in the conference until he started talking about
negative recruiting. Now I’m going to start
talking.”
Attempts by the Daily Bruin to reach Toledo for comment were
unsuccessful.
The stone-throwing started when Neuheisel said UCLA tried to
lure his recruit, Clayton Walker, away. Neuheisel said that Toledo
told Walker that if he were fired, Neuheisel would be the next UCLA
coach.
But according to Toledo, those comments were taken out of
context.
“Basically what Neuheisel and (assistant coach) Steve
Axman were telling them was that I was going to get fired. I told
the kid, “˜If I get fired, I know Rick Neuheisel will be the
first one to apply.’ That’s exactly it,
verbatim,” Toledo said.
Neuheisel had also claimed that Walker lost his part-time job
because he was afraid to leave for work when UCLA coaches showed up
unannounced. But Toledo said that Walker’s mother had invited
them to stay.
Yesterday, Walker spoke to the Seattle Times, and he said that
both coaches were making more of this than the situation deserved
.
“I don’t think it was really that bad. I think
everybody’s just blowing everything out of proportion,”
he said. “I guess it’s just the recruiting game.
I’d say every school throws little jabs. But a few of the
things that were said were pretty big time.”
The University of Washington declined to comment to the Daily
Bruin Monday, and said that Neuheisel was unavailable for
comment.
The Seattle Times reached Neuheisel, but he too said he did not
want to get involved.
“Bob can go ahead and say what he wants to say,”
Neuheisel said.
Toledo lobbed a few more rocks in Neuheisel’s direction,
including allegations of Neuheisel’s own negative
recruiting.
“He called a couple of our recruits and said we were lying
to them,” Toledo said. “He made some real negative
comments, that (UCLA) coaches live far away, that we’re not
close to the campus, that the school doesn’t take care of its
ex-players.”
No formal complaints have been filed with the Pac-10, but the
conference has the latitude to look at informal allegations, as
well.
“When we have members of our institutions making these
complaints we will take a look at it,” assistant commissioner
of public relations for the Pac-10 Jim Muldoon said. “We have
begun the process already.”
Should the Pac-10 compliance and infractions committee, made up
of representatives from member schools, find any programs engaged
in negative recruiting, they could face minor penalties, such as
loss of visitation days with recruits.
