BALTIMORE — On his first day as UCLA's football coach -- and his last as a Baltimore Ravens assistant -- Rick Neuheisel reflected Sunday on his sometimes "naive and reckless" days in his first go-round as a college coach and how he hopes to recapture his love of the game with the Bruins.
In his first one-on-one interview since getting the job to coach at his alma mater a day earlier, Neuheisel also spoke about how he might never win over his most strident critics, and what he planned to do differently this time around.
"I have this inner sense of calm," said Neuheisel, 46, sitting in his sport utility vehicle outside M&T Bank Stadium on a drizzly afternoon. "I remember getting the job at Colorado and thinking, [whispering now] 'Oh, my God, I don't know what I'm doing. I can't tell anybody . . .' I was very impressionable. You're not sure. There's no book on how to do it.
"This time, I just have this sense that we're going to make a lot of great decisions. Just like a drive: You make good decision after good decision. You can't force them, and if you continue to do that, you're going to score."
In the past, Neuheisel was flagged for his share of NCAA penalties. He was fired by Washington in 2003 for participating in a betting pool on the NCAA basketball tournament. He sued for wrongful termination and settled with the school and NCAA in March 2005 for $4.5 million.
Before that, Colorado was put on two years' probation by the NCAA for infractions committed while he was coach there. All were determined to be secondary violations and most involved improper contact with recruits.
"I was naive and reckless," he said. "I took some missteps that didn't need to be taken. . . . I was out there probably too flamboyant, too in-your-face, and if you get down to the core of it, probably insecure about going up against the guys like the Mack Browns and Tom Osbornes and John Mackovics -- the illustrious longtimers that had cut their teeth long before I'd gotten into the business.
"I just didn't want anybody to think I was scared. I was going 100 mph. I just didn't want to look like I was going to back down. I just went too fast. . . . There was a time where, OK, they gave me the keys to the car and I'm going to drive it fast, instead of checking to make sure everything was in order."
He said he began to get more comfortable in the job, however, and was a more mature -- and secure -- coach as the years passed.
