PRO FOOTBALL '87 : COACHES, PLAYERS, TEAMS AND TRENDS TO WATCH THIS SEASON : TED TOLLNER : He's in Buffalo, Not Necessarily in Exile

By RICH ROBERTS

Sept. 11, 1987 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — The tall, lean figure appears familiar but oddly out of place, as if living one of Shirley MacLaine’s other lives.

While watching the Buffalo Bills practice in their suburban stadium--and, boy, here’s a team that really needs practice--one muses what cruel fate has transported Ted Tollner to Buffalo to tutor receivers and nobody else, while out there somewhere are whole teams that need to be coached?

Bad enough that Tollner should be fired from USC following a 7-4 regular season and a Citrus Bowl appearance, albeit a 16-7 loss to Auburn--but to wind up as an assistant coach in Buffalo? Hasn’t this man suffered enough?

OK, OK, enough with the Buffalo rips. Let’s just deal with why Tollner is in Buffalo.

Because there is no NFL franchise in Nome?

No, Tollner is in Buffalo because Mike McGee, the USC athletic director, decided one day last fall that he would rather see Tollner anywhere except on the USC sideline on a Saturday afternoon and recommended that USC President James H. Zumberge arrange it.

Some would even name the hour--the minute--when McGee reached his decision.

The annual game against Notre Dame had just ended and Tollner was standing at a microphone in front of the USC rooting section trying to introduce the seniors who had just played their final home game, but the crowd kept jeering him down. For all Tollner knew, McGee was one of them.

Reflecting on that sour incident in his small office at Rich Stadium this week, Tollner said, “There was a team that had gone 7 and 4 and been invited to a bowl game, and the students didn’t even want to recognize the seniors, which was a tradition.

“That was no fun for the players. They had just gotten beat on national television, 38-37, on the last play of the game--a hell of a game. You think they wanted to stand out there? But you do it whether you win or lose. It’s a responsibility. You stand up and you do it. I told ‘em, ‘We will do what we’re supposed to do, regardless of the outcome.’ But when I saw it was getting embarrassing, I just told ‘em, ‘Let’s go. We’ve met our responsibility here. They don’t want to meet theirs, so fine.’ That part of it hurt me more than whatever abuses were being directed at me.”

One wonders how Barry Switzer or Bo Schembechler would have handled that situation. McGee would say they probably wouldn’t have put themselves into that situation--that is, losing 7 of 8 games in four years to the archrivals--Notre Dame and UCLA. Tough guys, their images say.

Tollner? A nice guy who lost the wrong games. He was 6-1 against teams ranked in the Top 10 when USC played them, was second only to UCLA in Pacific 10 Conference victories, 22 to 21, and never lost to a Big Ten team.

In Tollner’s case, Leo Durocher was wrong. A four-year record of 26-20-1, with three bowl appearances, including a Rose Bowl victory, isn’t Florida swampland. But, gosh, maybe if he had driven his players harder, or stood up to McGee . . .

Rodney Peete, the USC quarterback, said of his former coach, “He is a very nice guy. A lot of people say that. But I think he’s a good coach, too. He doesn’t yell and scream at his players like a lot of coaches, but that’s his philosophy.”

But Peete, for one, sensed that Tollner never was on solid ground with McGee “ever since I came here. People were on his back since I was a freshman.

“After the year he had his first year here (4-6-1), there were all kinds of pressures and negatives around the program. It was a tough situation for him, but I think he handled it great.

“Coach Tollner and the whole staff did a good job of not letting it affect the team. There was something in the newspaper every week about his job being in jeopardy, but when he went out to practice he didn’t let it show.

“(New USC Coach) Larry Smith is a more aggressive type of coach. He’s more hard-nosed, more a disciplinarian than Coach Tollner was. But their offensive schemes and philosophies are pretty much the same. We just didn’t win some games we should have won--games that you have to win when you’re around here.”

Tollner’s predecessor, John Robinson, won those games, 11 of 14 of them in seven years. He thought Tollner would, too, or he wouldn’t have recommended him and fellow assistant Paul Hackett for the job. But Robinson, who went on to coach the Rams, doesn’t think Tollner’s demeanor or his failure to handle the Bruins and the Irish was a factor.

“If he’d have been real tough they’d have accused him of being too tough and not easy going enough,” Robinson said. “When you don’t win a satisfactory number of games, they find a way, somehow, some way.

“It was a time of change at USC. I don’t think there was much stability around the program at that point. The athletic director was changing, the basketball coach changed, the baseball coach, the track coach. The place changed pretty much from top to bottom while Ted was there the last three years.”

But, most of all, at the top. On Robinson’s recommendation, Athletic Director Dick Perry hired Tollner a year before he got fired himself. Enter McGee, and heads really began to roll around Heritage Hall.

One sore point was that McGee said he would extend Tollner’s contract a year (through 1989) but changed his mind when an assistant coach, Russ Purnell, was found to have contacted a recruit more times than the NCAA allows. Tollner thought Purnell should have only been suspended. McGee fired Purnell. USC got two years probation.

There also were reports that McGee wanted Tollner to change some of his staff, but Tollner refused.

McGee has been quoted: “Professionally, there wasn’t any impediment to communication (with Tollner). I extended his contract the year after we went to the Rose Bowl (‘84). A year later we’re again facing violations of NCAA recruiting rules.”

In retrospect, there may have been many reasons why McGee’s support of Tollner was wanting. But it’s most likely that the driving factor in Tollner’s exit was that he simply wasn’t McGee’s guy and therefore was less likely to be manipulated. Maybe Tollner was too tough for his own good.

“Mike McGee was never gonna walk on me,” Tollner says. “I was gonna run the football program my way.

“I think that (nice guy) image came because I believe in treating players, the media, alumni with the respect they deserve. I can get on players, but I don’t need to do it for a show to you. The players know that. There’s no wishy-washy (attitude). ‘You’ll do this or you won’t play.’ I have no trouble with that.

“If ‘a nice guy’ means I’m soft and can’t make hard decisions and can’t discipline players, then it’s inaccurate.”

The aroma of warm peanut butter cookies in the oven fills the large apartment in the woodsy Oak Forest complex four miles from Rich Stadium, but a slight chill filters through the day’s humidity.

Barbara Tollner is wary. Her husband has been abused before, and she isn’t about to let it happen again.

“Do (the editors) tell you what kind of story they want you to write?” she asks the reporter.

She recommends the life of a coach’s wife “only if you have a strong heart,” she says. “Everybody’s so vocal about what you’re doing, and it’s usually critical.”

She withholds her personal opinions of Mike McGee but says, “Had we won (against) Notre Dame, it would have been a little harder to get rid of us, but he was after Ted for a long time.”

She employs the first person plural because, after all, Tollner’s fate is is theirs, too.

“All of us,” Barbara Tollner says, “our whole family.”

Their three children are grown. The eldest, Linda, lives in North Hollywood with her husband and the Tollners’ two grandchildren. Tamara, a USC public relations graduate in 1986, works for an advertising agency in Los Angeles. Bruce, a USC business graduate this year, works in the Bills’ ticket office.

“I can’t get too bitter because we have two Trojans in our family,” Barbara Tollner says, smiling. “What is it they say: ‘a Trojan forever?’ ”

She doesn’t even have any complaints about Trojan alumni in general.

“They always make a lot of noise, but they don’t cause the trouble,” she said. “It’s the people who hire and fire that do.”

Barbara Tollner taught at Los Amigos High School in Fountain Valley but now works part-time as a receptionist at a fitness center.

“I have to get a New York teaching credential,” she says.

They also would like to get a house of their own, but they haven’t sold their house in Long Beach yet.

Besides, she notes, “Barbara and (Raider Coach) Tom Flores rented all those years and finally built this past year down by the beach, and pow! “

Irwindale.

“I don’t miss the smog and I don’t miss gridlock,” Barbara Tollner says. “I do miss my friends and family.”

But her husband doesn’t worry about her.

“My wife’s tough,” he says. “It was hard for her, too, to sit in the stands and hear things. But when times get tough, you draw on people you love.”

Ted Tollner looks a visitor straight in the eye, like a man who has little to fear. In 1986, he was fired for the first time in his life. In 1960, he survived a plane crash. What more can they do to him?

Twenty-seven years ago, in an orchard at the end of a foggy runway in Bowling Green, Ohio, Tollner went down with the Cal Poly (SLO) football team. Twenty-two teammates, coaches and team personnel perished, most because they were sitting up front when the old C-46 hit the ground and split in two. Tollner, a junior quarterback, and most of the 25 other survivors were in the back.

“I was supposed to be up front,” he said, “but coming back (to Bowling Green) we had a rough flight and some of our players wanted to move up because supposedly it was more stable in front. So I said to one of the guys, ‘Hey, take my seat.’ It was a wide receiver from Bakersfield, Curtis Hill.”

Hill was one of the victims. Tollner got out with a broken and dislocated left ankle.

“I remember the whole thing very clearly,” Tollner said, “taking off and hearing that engine quit. I was on the left side. The right engine kept going, so the right engine just powered us right over. They never knew how high we were because it was so foggy, but they guessed about 300 feet. We hit on the left wing (where) I was sitting.

“I’ve been back, coached against (Bowling Green). I still get the jitters occasionally, especially back in this part of the country because of the weather. I was flying around a lot last winter in situations that were similar.

“Any time you’re in a life-death situation and you’re one of the fortunate to be spared, you find a value of life. Every day that you get, there’s nothing more valuable, whether it’s good or bad. It gives you strength.”

Tollner won’t guess what his future holds. He doesn’t even dwell on the past.

“To have bitterness for very long doesn’t serve a purpose,” he said. “But I wouldn’t trade the SC experience even knowing the end result.

“The general feeling may be that it was a much more negative situation than I experienced. I thought there were many more highs. My relationship with Mike is the only negative thing that I have with the school.”

His new job, he said is “different and I like it. I feel fortunate to have one in the NFL.

“But I like responsibility. I like to be in a role of making decisions. It doesn’t bother me to make decisions and be accountable for the results.

“I’m 47 years old and I enjoy coaching football. Whichever direction it takes me, that’s where I’ll go. You can’t look back.”