Neuheisel learns lesson, goes back to school

0 Comments | USA TODAY, August, 2008 | by Robyn Norwood

LOS ANGELES -- Rick Neuheisel is back on the UCLA football practice field, coaching where he once played. The field faces a different direction these days. He does, too.

Neuheisel still has the abundant gifts and confidence some rivals find irksome, but he is no longer a boy wonder. As a player, he went from walk-on quarterback to most valuable player of the 1984 Rose Bowl. He became coach at Colorado when he was only 33 -- and looked 22 -- and coached two top-10 teams.

He then moved to Washington, where his Huskies won the Rose Bowl when he was 39.

He was always ahead of an invisible schedule. As it turned out, so was his midlife crisis. At 42, he plummeted.

Fired at Washington in 2003 because he participated in NCAA basketball...