From Cardinal to Blue & Gold
By Larry Stewart
Before I get to UC Irvine Senior Associate Athletic
Director Darrin Nelson, I first want to explain who I am and why
you are reading this on the UCI website.
I was a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times for
30-plus years after spending nearly nine years at the long
ago-defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner. I am now
semi-retired.
UCI Athletic Director Mike Izzi, a good friend since
the mid-1980s, recently suggested that I write a regular column for
this website. So here I am.
Nelson is a good topic for my first column
because the Heisman Trophy winner will be announced Saturday, and
in 1981 Nelson, a four-year starter at running back for Stanford,
finished sixth in the Heisman balloting. USC’s Marcus Allen
was the winner that year.
Nelson went on to an 11-year NFL career
and was a senior associate athletic director at his alma mater
before coming to Irvine early this year.
Izzi, who had worked directly with Nelson in the
Stanford athletic department, was the one who convinced him to come
to UCI. So what was it that Izzi said to Nelson to get him to leave
Stanford for UCI?
“He lied to me. He told me they have
football here,” Nelson said with a hardy laugh.
Other than the fact that UCI does not have
football, Nelson’s job here is similar to the one he had at
Stanford, which among other things involves fund-raising and
community relations.
Nelson said he felt it was time
for a change.
“A friend once told me you should
change jobs every 10 years, and I had been at Stanford 15
years,” Nelson said. “Also, my parents still live down
here and I wanted to be closer to them.”
Nelson was born in Sacramento but
moved with his parents to Compton when he was only eight months
old. Nelson, who was raised by a school-teacher father and a mother
who worked at the phone company, said his childhood was very
structured, with an emphasis on education.
“I had a great childhood,” he
said.
He attended a private high school, Pius X
in Downey, and chose to play college football at Stanford because
Cal Berkeley told him he was too small. The 5-9, 170-pound running
back made the folks at Berkeley regret that. I saw that first
hand.
I went from the Herald Examiner to
the Times in 1978. My first road trip for the Times was to Berkeley
to cover the Big Game, Stanford vs. Cal, in November of that year.
Darrin Nelson was then a sophomore.
I dug deep into my files and found
the story I wrote about that game. The headline read: “NELSON
RUNS AWAY WITH THE BIG GAME, 30-10.”
Keeping in mind Stanford’s nickname
then was Cardinals, rather than Cardinal, and John Elway was only a
freshman, here is the top part of my story:
BERKELEY—You think
of Stanford football in terms of great quarterbacks, such as
Frankie Albert, John Brodie, Jim Plunkett, Mike Boryla, Guy
Benjamin and Steve Dils, the nation’s leading collegiate
passer this season.
But now the Cardinals also
have a great running back.
Darrin Nelson, as a
freshman last year, became the first college player ever to gain
more than 1,000 yards rushing and catch 50 passes or more passes in
the same season.
And he’s done it
again.
Nelson ran for 177
yards on only 17 carries and caught four passes Saturday as
Stanford won the 81st Big Game, 30-10, over California
before a sellout crowd of 77,880 at Memorial Stadium.
Entering his senior season at Stanford,
Nelson was a legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate. But Stanford also
had a junior quarterback named Elway and put more emphasis on him
winning the Heisman. (FYI, Elway finished second behind
Georgia’s Herschel Walker in the 1982 Heisman balloting.)
As for Stanford choosing to push Elway for
the Heisman in 1981 rather than him, Nelson said, “I never
gave it much thought, one way or the other.”
As a pro, Nelson played eight
seasons with the Minnesota Vikings, who made him the seventh pick
of the 1982 NFL draft. His best seasons were 1985-87.
Asked to name his best game, Nelson said
it was probably a victory over Green Bay at Lambeau Field in 1987.
He couldn’t remember his stats but said, “My goal was
always to play a perfect game, one with no mistakes. Right at the
end of the game I missed a block and was really ticked at myself
because that was my only mistake.”
It is that kind of desire for perfection
that makes Darrin Nelson a perfect fit for UC Irvine. Even though
there is no football.
