UCLA Is Recipient of This Big Catch

He’s winning in this no-win situation, despite hearing cracks by UCLA football teammates about the beach life and all the other gnarly stuff in that other sport, dude, only to turn around and get jabbed by fellow Bruin volleyball players about hanging out with the pigskins-for-brains. And . . . maybe . . . saying . . . it . . . real . . . slow.

Danny Farmer doesn’t juggle delicate objects this well on the toughest of catches. He goes from football to volleyball, back to football, back to volleyball, treading a path that once was studded with great risks but now is lined mostly with rewards.

Or is it not enough of a payoff to win a national championship in one sport as a key reserve at middle blocker and then, a few months later, in the fall of 1998, emerge as the No. 1 receiver on a team that gears much of its offense on its passing?

Those rewards.

He took the risk, which he readily acknowledges was a considerable one, at his arrival. Farmer gave up a volleyball scholarship, after all, to play football as a walk-on. That was because the NCAA prohibits a free ride in one sport while the athlete is playing football. That rule was designed to eliminate the old practice of signing a 310-pound lineman to a gymnastics letter to dodge the football limits.

The Bruins didn’t offer Farmer a football scholarship at Loyola High but they did after 1996, the season in which he became the first freshman in school history to lead the team in receptions. The next year, Jim McElroy got most of the attention, but Farmer still got his share. He went to volleyball and helped the Bruins win a national title. Back at football, he was moved from split end to the more high-profile spot, replacing McElroy at flanker.

He is on his way to going from being largely unrecruited by UCLA to one of the Bruins’ greatest receivers.

Farmer is a junior, but also ranks 14th in receptions, with a good chance to reach the top five this season. He’s 13th in receiving yardage and figures to climb to the top 10, maybe beyond.

And then the guy who one day could become the greatest pass catcher of all time at UCLA will skip spring drills to play volleyball.

“What volleyball does is, it enables me to perfect different aspects of my athletic ability--jumping, quickness, a lot of different things,” Farmer said. “And football does the same for volleyball. I think playing both, for me, is exciting.

“I don’t really consider myself either. Now, and even then, I just consider myself an athlete. If I coin myself one of them, I think it leaves out a lot of different aspects as a complete athlete. I still don’t think of myself as a football player or volleyball player, I just consider myself an athlete playing football and volleyball.”

Farmer is blessed with the combination of leaping ability and size at 6 feet 4, and has hands so big and strong that teammates have been known to say something along the lines of, “It’s not fair, you’ve got a glove” after an impressive grab.

By any label, he is a major component on the third-rated team in the country, having contributed 81 yards and a touchdown in the opener against Texas and then 100 yards last Saturday at Houston, offering big plays along the way. He had catches for 36 and 25 yards against the Longhorns, and for 41 and 40 in Game 2. Against Houston, the 41-yard play was the key to the victory, a grab of a perfectly thrown ball by Cade McNown down the right sideline on third and 17. An incompletion and subsequent punt would have allowed the Cougars a chance to turn it into a three-point game with about five minutes left.

All of which should have been a surprise to absolutely no one.

“If you get the ball anywhere near Danny, he’ll probably pull the ball in and make the catch,” said Ron Caragher, UCLA’s receiver coach.

Anywhere near Danny.

“He’s got a knack for going after the ball and making the catches,” Caragher added. “If I were to judge the great UCLA catches of the last couple years, he’d be on a lot of them.”

Like the one last season in the Cotton Bowl, where Farmer made the grab heading to the corner and kept one foot inbounds while getting hit.

Or the one against USC about five weeks earlier, when he made an acrobatic play on third and 17 from the Bruin 18 that was worth 36 yards and sustained the drive that became the eventual go-ahead touchdown.

Or the one against Washington a week before that, when he flashed his athleticism by turning an inside screen pass into a 60-yard touchdown play early in the fourth quarter.

Those catches.

Those rewards.

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