Another job for Brooks?

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

HE'S FLOATED THE wild and scenic Rogue River in the fall for the first time in his life, fly-fishing during the steelhead run. He's played golf on sunny days. And he's gone to Autzen Stadium simply to watch football from the stands that surround Rich Brooks Field, rather than coach on the sideline, and what an "out of body experience" that was for the first time.

For the first time in close to half a century, Rich Brooks hasn't been involved in some aspect of football this fall, as a player or a coach. At age 60, the former Oregon coach stepped away from the game after 18 years with the Ducks and six grueling years in the NFL, the last four as the defensive coordinator of the Atlanta Falcons, and he'll know soon, probably within the next few weeks, whether he's ever going back to coaching.

The head coaching vacancies at Cal, where Tom Holmoe has announced his resignation effective after the Rutgers game on Friday, and at San Diego State intrigue him.

"If the situation is right, I would coach again in a nanosecond," he said in the living room of his home overlooking the McKenzie River. "If the situation is not, obviously I don't need to. So if I do it, it would be because I think it's a good situation for me, and a good opportunity to go in and win.

"I don't want to go into a situation that's going to be dismal."

Brooks brings a lot to the table. He built the foundation of Oregon's program and took the Ducks to the Pac-10 title in 1994 before becoming head coach of the St. Louis Rams.

At Oregon, he did more with less, and even more once he got better facilities. He recruited and developed athletes who came primarily from California high schools, where you'd think his name still means something among prep coaches. He's a proven fund-raiser.

Looking indeed rested and fit, Brooks seems genuinely pleased with his decision to step away from football for a year. And if the right opportunity to get back into football doesn't come along, Brooks said, he'll occupy himself with more than fishing and golf.

Possibilities include the business world, radio or television, or working in some capacity for Oregon. He's put off those decisions while taking this sabbatical, and while he waits now to see whether he gets a coaching job. Or, as Brooks put it, with a laugh, "until I figure out what I want to do when I grow up."

WHEN BROOKS HAS gone to football games this fall, it's been by choice. He went back to Atlanta to visit his daughter, Kerri, a camera operator for CBS Sports, and saw the Falcons lose in overtime to the San Francisco 49ers. He went to the Oregon State-UCLA game in Corvallis, and he's been to all the Oregon home games except the Utah game, sitting in the same seats on the north side of the stadium that his wife, Karen, had for all the years that he coached the Ducks, and that they've kept since then.

The Civil War on Dec. 1 will be the first that Brooks has just sat and watched, in person, since he was an Oregon State freshman in 1959, when freshmen were ineligible. He sat in the student section at Hayward Field as the Beavers won, but then the winning team in the Civil War was almost always his team, first as an OSU player and assistant coach, and later as the UO coach, to the tune of 22-3-2.

For Brooks, sitting in the stands this fall has been "a revelation." He's noticed, as if for the first time, the constant motion inside the stadium, fans walking back and forth to concession stands, and wonders how many are watching the game. At the Falcons' game, he heard the fans calling for quarterback Chris Chandler to be pulled in favor of raw rookie Michael Vick, after any incompletion.

At Autzen, Brooks sits among families of coaches and UO staff members, so the buzz of conversation isn't the same as in other sections, but he saw the large number of fans leaving early when they thought the Ducks had lost to Southern Cal, and heard the bitter talk-show second-guessing after the loss to Stanford.

Brooks looks at this Oregon team and sees a special quarterback, an overachieving defense, and athletes "who believe in themselves enough to make plays when they need to make plays." And coaches who have done "an absolutely magnificent job to be 9-1."

"The expectation level has obviously changed, and the hype is bigger than it's ever been," Brooks said of the 2001 version of Oregon football. "I'm not sure that the hype could ever get much bigger. So the expectation level goes right along with that, and I'm not sure that's fair to the coaches.

"You look at all the games this year that could have gone either way. A few of them go the wrong way and all of a sudden, there's a lot of ugly stuff going on. I think people have lost perspective a little bit. The fans. It's great to be at the level that Oregon's at, and it's very, very difficult to get there, and to maintain it is difficult at best."

Yet expectations go with winning, and Brooks still wants the chance to win again.