The UCLA football team had lost six games in a row, but the
Bruins were holding on to a 31-30 lead over Stanford with about 20
seconds left. Stanford was in field-goal range, lining up to
attempt a game-winning kick, when UCLA called a timeout. The Bruins
were hoping to freeze the kicker and avoid their seventh loss in a
row. It was on that day ““ Oct. 29, 1994 ““ that a UCLA
tradition was born. Someone had thrown a towel out to the hashmarks
on the Bruin sideline. Ed Kezirian went to pick it up. “The
next thing I know I’m running over to the student section to
try to get everybody up and then I start running the length of the
Rose Bowl and start swinging this towel,” said Kezirian, who
is the UCLA assistant athletic director for academic services. Eric
Abrams, Stanford’s kicker, had been a perfect 7-for-7 on
field goals between 30 and 39 yards. But while Kezirian was waving
his towel, Abrams missed the kick. UCLA won the game, ending its
six-game losing streak. “You would’ve thought we had
one of the BCS bowls, we were so excited,” Kezirian said.
Kezirian was invited back onto the sidelines by then-coach Terry
Donahue for the rest of the season, in which UCLA won the rest of
its games, including a 31-19 upset of ranked USC. Since then,
Kezirian has been on the UCLA sidelines, motivating the players and
the fans. “He’s a high-energy guy,” said Blane
Kezirian, Ed’s son and a UCLA tight end from 1999 to 2003.
“He’s always upbeat and that spread to the team. We
loved it when he waved the towel.” There was one game that
was a notable exception to Ed Kezirian’s towel-waving. He was
the team’s head coach for the 2002 Las Vegas Bowl, when UCLA
beat New Mexico, making Kezirian the coach with the best winning
percentage at UCLA ““ and in the nation ““ in any sport.
But while Kezirian might be well-known among football fans as the
towel-waver or the head coach for one game, he plays an important
role in the athletic department as the assistant athletic director
for academic services.
Ends to essays Kezirian oversees the academics
of football players, with a team roster typically hovering around
100. He oversees tutorial programs, mentoring and counseling
sessions, and eligibility checks. He handles reports from all these
areas. Kezirian meets with the football coaches twice a week to go
over classes, grades, evaluations by tutors and any other issues
involving football players and academics. But where Kezirian is
most visible in academic services is checking up on the football
players in class. He can often be seen outside of a lecture hall
before a class starts, marking off a player’s name on his
clipboard once he sees him walk into the classroom. “Each
day, I know where my kids should be,” Kezirian said. “I
have a list of people to check on ““ freshmen, transfer
students and some upperclassmen we’ve highlighted. All of the
players know I’m class-checking.” Kezirian says that
the football players are generally good about going to class, and
that some of them call him when they’re running late. He also
has a rule for freshmen: He makes them sit in the first five rows
of classrooms during their first quarter at UCLA. “I will try
to be on campus four days a week,” Kezirian said. “Not
every day. But just enough to where everybody knows they
don’t want it to be the day I’m there.” Kezirian
is unique to the academic services unit in that he has a coaching
background. Before taking the job he has now, Kezirian was an
assistant coach at UCLA from 1982 to 1992, coaching offensive
tackles, tight ends, centers and guards at different points in his
coaching career. “It’s easy for me to transition from
coaching into the administration because the kids are still good
about perceiving me as a coach,” Kezirian said. “I kind
of take the coaching approach in the academic area. There are
people here that have great education skills. I bring more of the
willfulness.” As part of his job, Kezirian says he tries to
see as many of his players every day as he can ““ routinely
going to workouts, to the weight room and to practices, even giving
certain players reminders. He also follows up with athletes who not
only miss class, but tutoring, mentoring or counseling sessions.
“His energy and enthusiasm is such a positive impact to our
whole staff,” said Mike Casillas, who is currently the
assistant athletic director for academic services and director of
student-athlete counseling, and who works closely with Kezirian.
“Without him, it would be a lot duller, quieter. When the
going gets tough, he’s going to give you a hug or say
something to make you realize why we’re working long
hours.” “He’s extremely passionate about whatever
he’s doing,” Blane Kezirian said. “He’s the
hardest-working guy I’ve ever met.”
Perfect at the top At the end of the 2002
regular season, Bob Toledo was removed from the head coaching
position. The team still had a bowl game left on its schedule,
however. Ed Kezirian said that on the day athletic director Dan
Guerrero met with Toledo to tell him of his decision, a couple of
associate athletic directors went down to talk to Kezirian about
possibly being the acting head coach for three weeks, through the
bowl game. “My reaction was, “˜I don’t think
that’s a good idea,’ because I hadn’t coached all
year, I hadn’t coached for 10 years. It’d really be a
tough sell for the coaches and everyone else to accept,”
Kezirian said. But he didn’t say no, and the associate
athletic directors said they’d talk to him later. An hour
later, he met with Guerrero. Kezirian would be the acting head
coach for the Las Vegas Bowl. “It was a difficult time for
the program,” Kezirian said. “Part of my job was to be
healer at a difficult time.” Kezirian focused primarily on
the administrative part of being a head coach, by giving a program
in flux a stable figurehead. “I even commented at one of my
initial meetings to help the kids relax, “˜Don’t worry,
I won’t be calling a play,'” Kezirian said. He
let the offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator call the
plays. “I just had to take care of game-day management, make
sure that we looked good, and use timeouts and things that head
coaches do. I needed to do that,” Kezirian said. “It
was my role to administrate the travel and the game and work with
all of our different departments.” The Bruins prevailed in a
defensive game ““ neither team scored an offensive touchdown
until the fourth quarter ““ giving Kezirian a win in his only
game as head coach. “We worked hard and we rose to the
occasion,” Kezirian said. “We were enthusiastic when we
played the game, and we gained a little momentum in the second
half.” Kezirian also got to be the head coach while his son
was on the team. “It was a wonderful experience having him
around,” Blane Kezirian said. “I loved it. He created a
relaxed atmosphere.” On top of coaching him on the field, Ed
Kezirian got to be around his son while he was in school. “I
enjoyed watching him come through,” he said. “Blane was
good about me being around and wasn’t insecure.”
“It was probably harder on him than it was on me,”
Blane Kezirian said. “He let me make my own mistakes and
treated me fairly. He didn’t play favorites.”
The towel-waver On the day the towel-waving
tradition began, Ed Kezirian didn’t have to be on the
sidelines ““ he had gotten used to watching games from the
stands. The week before the Stanford win, UCLA traveled to Arizona.
The number of people that wanted to travel with the team was down
significantly compared to normal because of the losing streak.
“Donahue asked me if I wanted to go to an away game,”
Kezirian said. “I hadn’t been on the road with the team
in a year and a half.” In 1994, it had been two years since
Kezirian was an assistant coach under Donahue. The day of the
Arizona game, Kezirian stopped by the pre-game meal, just to wish
Donahue luck. “Coach Donahue asked me where I was going to
sit. I said I’d be sitting in the alumni section, where I had
been for the last year and a half. He says, “˜Would you like
to be down on the sideline?’ and gives me a sideline pass.
“˜Just don’t give me a penalty,’ he told
me,” Kezirian said. The Bruins gave a solid effort, playing a
close game against a ranked Arizona team before losing 34-24, and
Donahue asked Kezirian to be on the sidelines the following week
against Stanford. Kezirian jumped at the opportunity, waved that
towel, and the rest was history. “It’s nice he missed
the kick or I’d have been back in the stands.”