Kevin Craft shows painful perseverance for UCLA
T.J. SIMERS
The Bruins quarterback has a rough night, being intercepted three times, but he continues to persevere through it all.
He just turned 23 a month ago, and so maybe he's not a kid, but this is still a college experience.
And so watching Kevin Craft play quarterback for the Bruins on Friday night, while amusing in its oddity and folly, became painful to watch.
The young man fumbled in his own end zone, a kind referee's spot of the ball preventing UCLA from absorbing a safety.
The young man fumbled again, Arizona State looking as if it were waiting for the referee to intervene once more before getting around to picking up the ball and walking it in for a touchdown.
The young man had a pass intercepted, Arizona State returning it for a touchdown.
The young man had the Bruins in position to score and maybe tie things up with a two-point conversion. He lofted a pass into the end zone only to watch it be picked off and returned 100 yards for an Arizona State touchdown.
Yes, it could get worse.
The young man had another pass intercepted and returned by Arizona State for a touchdown, the Sun Devils managing only 122 yards in offense and a pair of field goals but scoring 34 points thanks mostly to the efforts of the young man playing quarterback for the Bruins.
"I've been around something like 35 years," said Arizona State Coach Dennis Erickson, "and I've never seen that many points scored on defense in my life. I'm going to put that defensive tape in my archives."
As embarrassing and unusual as it was, UCLA being sabotaged by its quarterback, no longer bowl-eligible and awaiting USC next, it doesn't even begin to explain what Craft endured.
He got hit, hounded and pounded because he's playing behind a substandard Pacific 10 Conference offensive line on a team that lacks the running game to take some of the pressure off of him.
Forced from the game at one point because of injury, he's tough, all right, returning to place himself in harm's way.
That's what he's supposed to do as a competitor, of course, and maybe he's not as good as he should be to be playing the position for UCLA, but there should be a limit to public humiliation.
Whatever happens next, and apparently he has another year of eligibility to be punished, he showed something special against Arizona State.
He hung in there, and when mercifully removed midway through the fourth quarter, he stood on the sideline still engaged in the game his teammates were playing.
