Now He Smiles From Ear to Ear

“I don’t know if you can see the scar,” Ryan Nece says.

Barely.

“It goes from here to here.”

He stretches his right hand over to his left ear, extending the thumb inside the closely cropped dark hair as a pointer, then drags it over the bend of the skull to the other side.

“I had an operation,” he says. “They cut me open from ear to ear.”

For the reconstruction.

“They pull down your skin, they cut underneath my eyes. I have titanium plates all through here.”

He motions to the bridge of his nose and up to eyebrow level.

“They think it was the steering wheel or the side of the car, like the door.”

During the crash.

“This part of my face just caved in.”

Suddenly being an undersized freshman starter at a new position and being second in tackles on the No. 2 football team in the nation doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

“He’s not one to boast or brag,” said his mother, Cathy Thomas. “But I think he’s pretty amazed.”

UCLA’s Ryan Nece has not had a typical journey. He was born to Ronnie and Cathy Lott on Feb. 24, 1979, but was given his mother’s maiden name in hopes he would create his identity and not grow up with expectations that accompany being the son of a football hero. Ronnie was still at USC at the time, though the young secondary coach who helped recruit him was gone by then, Bob Toledo having become head coach at University of the Pacific.

Ryan became his own man, all right. His parents had divorced and both remarried, and he starred at quarterback and safety at Pacific High in San Bernardino--and was teased by friends when he’d come to lunch with salads and vegetables while they inhaled burritos. He liked surfing the Net more than the waves but still went to the beach with friends.

In August 1996, the summer before his senior year, while driving with three others in the car, he stopped for gas near Newport Beach. On the curve of the on-ramp to the 55 Freeway, Nece accelerated too hard. He regained control, then hit gravel as he stepped on the gas to merge.

The convertible went sideways, zoomed toward the center divider, cleared the first lane of traffic, then the second, then even the third without getting T-boned by 2 p.m. traffic. They got all the way to the fast lane before impact.

“I saw the Mercedes symbol come to the door,” Nece said, “and that was it.”

Blood poured from his head--”This part of my face just caved in.” He was unconscious and not moving. One of his friends in the back seat suffered a broken leg, but they thought Ryan was dead. He was transported to a trauma center in Santa Ana.

The encouraging signs came quickly. He was awake by the time Cathy arrived from San Bernardino. More than that, he looked up at her and apologized for the havoc he had caused. The offering showed he had to be free of serious damage because that was Ryan, always trying to be considerate. He was put in the acute-care unit, another positive note because going to intensive care would have meant the injuries were worse. He had a nine-hour operation, leaving no long-term signs of the mayhem that had come to his face, and was in the hospital for 10 days. The double vision soon disappeared.

If it had been a recovery out of the New England Journal of Medicine to that point, it soon turned into one for Football Digest. Ryan was cleared to attend practice that fall, but only to attend. When Cathy stopped by one day to watch, she saw her son in the middle of the field, doing drills.

She walked out there and grabbed him by the right ear, taking him off the field, in front of his teammates and friends and everything. As if the crash itself hadn’t been horrifying enough.

In the end, he returned after sitting out the first game of his senior year. One game.

The 1996 season proved his considerable skills were still intact, and colleges stayed interested. Continuing to carve a path apart from the Lott name, even though he and his father had stayed close after the divorce, he picked UCLA.

He arrived as a safety and redshirted. He was moved to inside linebacker in the spring and performed well, despite weighing only about 205 pounds, and “that was after a big meal and with rocks in my pocket.” He was tossed around by the same linemen who would bury him and stay there a few extra seconds for effect. He couldn’t help but think the switch might not be the greatest idea.

Coaches encouraged him to stay with it, and Nece wasn’t much for giving up. He was up to about 210 by the time he opened fall practice as No. 2 on the depth chart behind Ramogi Huma, still 10 pounds lighter than any other Bruin linebacker and 15 or 20 behind most. His mom sent him back to school after weekend visits to San Bernardino with care packages loaded with doughnuts and cereal and heavy soups and bananas. She served banana smoothies at home.

When Huma went down with a sprained hip, an injury that greatly limited his impact the three games after the opener and kept him out of the next two, Nece moved in. Come the end of October--some 27 months after the car crash, one season after redshirting, about half a year after stepping up in weight class--he is an emerging star. He is first on the Bruins in tackles for a loss, second in tackles and sacks, sixth in passes broken up.

“I think the biggest thing that Ryan had to overcome was confidence within himself to play at the line of scrimmage against big guys,” said Marc Dove, the inside linebacker coach. “I think he envisioned himself as a small, defensive-back type, and all of a sudden these coaches come to you and say, ‘We think you can be a heck of a linebacker.’ We make that move. We’re trying to be supportive because we see all those possibilities.”

Said Nece: “It just blows your mind when you’re playing at this level this young and making plays like that. You look at guys like [USC’s Chris] Claiborne and [Ohio State’s Andy] Katzenmoyer, prototype linebackers like that, and they made plays when they were young too. I remember watching and saying, ‘Wow, those guys are really good.’

“Now people are saying, ‘You’re making plays.’ It’s kind of a good feeling. I’m not trying to compare myself to those guys yet or anything, but it’s just good to be out there making plays and having fun in front of thousands and thousands of people.”

Saturday

Stanford at UCLA

Rose Bowl

3:30 p.m.

FX