Rick Neuheisel is animated, on the edge of his chair, explaining the protocol as explained to him to survive a mortar-shell explosion.
"When the thing hits, it shoots up all the shrapnel, and that's what kills people," he says, his voice rising. Then he slams his hand down on the desk, adding, "So you've got to get your butt on the ground so it fires over the top of you."
UCLA's football coach is not an expert on mortars or the military. However, he did take care to learn a few basics on a recent trip to Iraq as part of Coaches Tour 2009, a series of meet-and-greets with servicemen and women that was designed to boost morale.
There's a warning siren, he goes on to explain, but that's not always the most telling sound. If you hear a whistling, the mortar shell is probably not close.
But . . .
"If you hear it THWACK" -- and he pounds the table even harder -- "get your [rear] down, because that means it's right behind you."
Neuheisel leans back, puts his arms -- which have been doing much of the talking -- on the chair's sides, crosses one leg, rests his chin in his hands and readies another anecdote. Of which there are many.
The boyish coach has had less than a month to reflect on the trip that took him to three continents, six countries and seven military bases over nine days. Neuheisel was joined by six other college football coaches -- Texas' Mack Brown, Ohio State's Jim Tressel, Air Force's Troy Calhoun, Mississippi's Houston Nutt, Wake Forest's Jim Grobe and former Auburn Coach Tommy Tuberville.
UCLA is scheduled to begin football practice Aug. 10, and when asked if he has some stories for his players, lessons he learned that he hopes to pass on to them, this grin emerges, and it curls into a wide smile.
"I'll give 'em a good story."
Certainly the mortar one; maybe this one too:
In Adana, Turkey, Neuheisel is chowing on a 5-foot shish kebab with the other coaches, a gunnery sergeant in his ear about the flight into Iraq the next day. The sergeant says the plane is doing a "tactical landing" -- basically a nose-first landing used to avoid enemy ground-to-air fire -- into Joint Base Balad.
Neuheisel loves roller coasters, so he's pumped. Afterward, he says it wasn't that bad, says California Screamin' in Anaheim is way scarier.
"I'm a little disappointed it wasn't as advertised."
Or this one:
