Ucla’s Forde Takes Trash-Talking To Another Level

Washington State University receiver Chris Jackson shocked coaches and teammates when he lashed out at University of Washington early this week.

Not to be outdone, UCLA defensive end Weldon Forde has taken rivalry trash-talking one step further - all the way to the white pages, in fact.

“I called Phalen Pounds last night and told him I would have two sacks,” Forde said this week.

Forde will line up against Pounds, USC’s left tackle, when the Bruins and Trojans meet Saturday at the Coliseum.

Forde and Pounds go back to the Shrine All-Star game, in which they were roommates coming out of high school.

“And I used to date a girl at USC who was roommates with Phalen’s girlfriend,” Forde said. Forde had two sacks against the Trojans last season, one of which knocked quarterback Brad Otton out of the game.

But can they buy a win?

Three USC athletes offered an athletic department tutor $200 to $500 to write their papers in the 1996-97 academic year, former tutor Stephanie Babcock told the Los Angeles Times.

Babcock, a tutor who resigned in September, said she has not been interviewed by the Academic Oversight Committee that is close to completing a two-month investigation into allegations of impropriety within the school’s student-athlete academic program.

“The athletes would offer to give their stipend checks,” she said. “They would say $400 or $200 or $500. They offered checks to do their work.”

Babcock would not identify the athletes who offered the money but said that two of them were football players who are currently on the team.

At least six current and former tutors have said they had ethical concerns about the program.

Price among Sporting News finalists

Mike Price and UCLA’s Bob Toledo are among 12 finalists for the Sporting News’ coach of the year honors.

Purdue coach Joe Tiller, one of Price’s former assistants at WSU, is also a finalist, as is former WSU head coach Jackie Sherrill, now at Mississippi State.

The other finalists are: Bobby Bowden, Florida State; Tommy Bowden, Tulane; Lloyd Carr, Michigan; Gary Crowton, Louisiana Tech; Dennis Franchione, New Mexico; Tom Osborne, Nebraska; Gary Pinkel, Toledo; and Bob Simmons, Oklahoma State.

Civil War notes

Oregon linebacker Peter Sirmon questioned his team’s desire after last week’s 52-31 loss at Arizona State.

The loss dropped Oregon to 5-5 and made this week’s game against Oregon State a must-win for the Ducks’ bowl hopes.

“Sometimes we want to play, and sometimes we don’t,” said Sirmon, the Pac-10’s leading tackler. “When you give up 52 points, it’s a pretty good indication that we didn’t show up ready to do the job.”

Akili Smith’s swagger has been toned down since the start of the season.

When the Oregon quarterback arrived in Eugene, he talked about taking Oregon to the Rose Bowl, and announced his candidacy for the Heisman Trophy to listeners of a Seattle radio station.

Once the laughter died down, Smith wasn’t even Oregon’s undisputed quarterback.

Early on, neither Smith nor Jason Maas was compelling enough to force coach Mike Bellotti to cease the rotation system.

Finally, Smith led Oregon to an upset over then-No. 6 Washington two weeks ago, solidifying his position as the Ducks’ full-time starter. Even so, Smith ranks just ninth among Pac-10 passers.

“I thought the team would rally around me and we’d go out there, have fun and just beat up on everybody,” Smith said. “But things worked out differently.”

Ryan Klassen, a sophomore linebacker at Oregon, suffered his third concussion of the season last week and probably won’t play football again.

Oregon State, one of the Pac-10’s best rushing teams the past six seasons under option-oriented coach Jerry Pettibone, now ranks last in that department after switching to a balanced offense under new coach Mike Riley.

The Beavers have averaged just 46 yards per game on the ground during their five-game losing streak. Oregon may offer the perfect cure. The Ducks gave up 405 yards rushing to Arizona State.

“We will go after them, and we do a few things differently to be able to do that,” OSU offensive line coach Jim Gilstrap said.

The Beavers will do it with a revamped offensive line. Two starters recently suffered season-ending knee injuries.

Oregon is 18-3 in the last 21 Civil Wars, but the Beavers are 2-1 in their last three games at Autzen Stadium.

Big Game notes

The first time Stanford running back Mike Mitchell witnessed a Big Game was in 1992, when he sat in the middle of the Cal student section while on a recruiting trip to Berkeley.

Stanford won the game 41-21, and eventually won over Mitchell. Mitchell was recruited to Stanford by former Dallas Cowboys star Doug Cosbie, who left the Cardinal in 1994 and is now the offensive coordinator at Cal.

Stanford linebacker Chris Draft claims to have cured a pesky vomiting habit by having his tonsils and adenoids removed last spring. In the two previous seasons, Draft would run off the field early in the first period so he could throw up. “The trainers were taking bets before the game about when it would happen,” Draft said. Draft was told it was nerves, but he never believed it, and removing the tonsils and adenoids improved his breathing and apparently eliminated the vomiting.

Stanford quarterback Chad Hutchinson will start against Cal despite a sprained right thumb suffered in last week’s 38-28 loss at WSU.

, DataTimes