At his emotional low point,
Cliff Frazier never would have imagined
that losing a leg might liberate him.

Lift his spirits?

Not a chance.

So, for more than a year,
the former UCLA nose guard
put off the inevitable,
telling doctors that he
wasn't about to let his
long battle with diabetes
render him an amputee.

"I thought I'd get well," he said,

"but I never did."

It wasn't until a life-threatening
infection developed in his bones
that he finally relented:
his lower right leg had to go.

Last winter, it was amputated.

And Frazier, a key figure in the
Bruins' upset of top-ranked
Ohio State in the 1976 Rose Bowl,
braced for the crash.

It never came.

"I'm a new man in terms of
not having that infected feeling,
not being sick all the time," Frazier, 57
said from his home in University City, MO
a lilt in his voice.

"I'm still getting used to this prosthetic,
but I'm doing better, babe."

"A lot of people don't
understand why I'm not depressed,
but I feel so much
better that I'm actually a happy camper."
Frazier, a regular cast member
on the 1980s HBO sitcom
" 1st & Ten " would be happier still
if he could revive his acting career.
"I was an artist before
I was a football player,"
said the former theater arts major,
an actor, singer, writer
and multi-instrumentalist.
"I just happened to excel
athletically and get a big name, but,
I was always an artist, man, always."

A native of Chesterfield, MO
grad of Lafayette Sr. High School
and a two-time All-American at
Fort Scott Community College
in Fort Scott, Kansas,
Frazier says he went to UCLA
"because it gave me the best opportunity
for both things I was interested in:
athletics and the art world."

In 1975, he was an All-American
for coach Dick Vermeil and the Bruins'
defensive player of the year.
The Bruins were crushed by Ohio State, 41-20,
in an October game at the Coliseum,
but eight weeks later they
wrapped up their first Rose Bowl
bid in 10 years by topping USC,
25-22, despite fumbling 11 times.

"Right then I knew there was nobody
in this country that could beat us,"
Frazier said. "We peaked at the right time."
Woody Hayes, in his last trip to the Rose Bowl,
had an unbeaten Ohio State team
that led the nation in scoring,
ranked 2nd in points given up and was
a two-touchdown favorite over
the 11th-ranked Bruins,
who'd lost twice and tied once.

But UCLA dominated the second
half of a 23-10 stunner,
John Sciarra and Wendell Tyler
leading the offense and
Frazier sparking the defense with
13 solo tackles and an assist.

What happened at halftime
to spark the turnaround?
"We just came in and
ate a little raw meat,"
Frazier told Sports Illustrated,
"and spread some gun
powder on everybody's dish."
Frazier laughs when the quote is read
back to him 34 years later,
noting, "I was just trying to be funny."

His athletic career had
reached its high-water mark.
A second-round pick of
the Kansas City Chiefs,
he knew he faced a rough road
when the Chiefs phoned him on draft day.

"They didn't say,
'Welcome to the Kansas City Chiefs,'
They said,
'We hear you've got a bad attitude,'
and it broke my heart. I said,
'What? Who told you that?'"

Lynn Stiles, UCLA's defensive
coordinator under Vermeil,
says Frazier was a "gamer" and a
"first-round talent" who often
frustrated his coaches by paying
less than rapt attention in practice.

As a motivational tool, Stiles says,
the UCLA staff enlisted a camera crew
to train its lens on Frazier
in the lead-up to the Rose Bowl,
hoping to keep the lineman focused.

Nobody told Frazier that the camera was empty,
Stiles notes, "and that might have been the best
prepared he ever was going into a game."
He was extraordinary."

Frazier, though, didn't last long in the NFL.

He played in 14 games with the Chiefs,
was unable to catch on with any
other team and left football behind in 1978.
A year later,
he landed his first film role,
in " North Dallas Forty "
A friend, Joe Sutton, put him
to work as a record promoter
after Frazier told him he'd like
to learn the music business.
"He was always a little
involved with acting,
a little involved with music,
a little involved with writing,"
said Sutton, whose long career in
entertainment has included stints as a
manager for Neil Diamond and
Ricky Nelson, among others.
"He never quite zeroed in,
and in the entertainment business,
you have to zero in."

Stardom may have eluded him, but Frazier
seemed to be doing all right for himself.
For several years in the 1980s,
he was married to singer
Thelma Houston, best known for her
chart-topping 1977 disco hit,
"Don't Leave Me This Way."
Later, with another woman, Frazier fathered
a son, also named Cliff,
who is a senior tennis player at Alabama State.

And from 1984 to 1991,
in his longest-running acting role,
he played the part of Jethro Snell in " 1st & 10, "
about the on and off-the-field hi-jinks
of the fictional California Bulls football team.

Shortly after the show was canceled,
Frazier was diagnosed with diabetes,
kicking off a nearly two-decade
battle with the disease.
"I'm not as agile as I'd like to be," he said,
"but I'm hoping to get a
new prosthetic in the next year.
I'm happy I'm not going back to the hospital.

I'm really very thankful."

"I've got a new perspective on life."