TAKE FIVE: AHMAD RASHAD

Thursday, Dec. 21, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

The familiar voice on the speaker phone wanted to talk about his beloved Oregon Ducks, who will line up against Brigham Young in tonight's Las Vegas Bowl at Sam Boyd Stadium, and "Tuesday Night With Ahmad," the NBA TV show he will host from Las Vegas during NBA All-Star week.

But I wanted to talk to Ahmad Rashad about when he was Bobby Moore.

I told him that were it not for a color photo that I had clipped from my first Sports Illustrated subscription, I probably would have never known of Ahmad Rashad before he started hauling in clutch passes for the Minnesota Vikings.

He laughed when I mentioned that glossy reminder of his glory days at Oregon.

"Dan Fouts used to sign that picture," he said.

In the photo, you can see a hand about ready to place the football in Moore/Rashad's breadbasket. It belonged to Fouts when he was Oregon's quarterback.

I told Rashad that I had just returned from lunch with Sam Jankovich, the new general manager of the Las Vegas Gladiators arena football team, who had tried to recruit him out of Mount Tahoma High School in Tacoma, Wash.

Jankovich, then an assistant at Washington State, told me that Rashad declined the scholarship offer because Wazzu's offensive linemen were too small. Rashad remembers it that way, too. "He introduced me to one of their starting guards. I was bigger than he was," he said.

While Rashad said he never regretted his college choice, he does have misgivings about not taking up Nike co-founder Phil Knight, another Oregon alum, on his stock offer when the fledgling company ran out of money to pay him for wearing its shoes in the NFL.

"I didn't think the company was going to make it," he said. "So I took a check."

1. Although most football fans associate Rashad with his Pro Bowl career with the Vikings or his work as an Emmy-winning broadcaster, he said there are many football fans in the Pacific Northwest who still know him as Bobby Moore from the University or Oregon. To wit, he said he was in Europe doing a story for NBA TV when a stranger called out to him, "Go Ducks!"

"I will be wearing my Oregon hat and letterman jacket and watching on TV," he said of tonight's game at Sam Boyd Stadium. "I'm a big Mike Bellotti fan. Go Ducks!"

2. At Oregon, Rashad was friends with Steve Prefontaine, the Ducks' iconoclastic track and field star who was killed in an automobile crash and became the subject of two full-length movies. Rashad also had a close relationship with Bill Bowerman, the legendary Oregon track coach, who designed a pair of running shoes for Rashad to use in training.

Those shoes and ones worn by Prefontaine were the original Nikes.

"He made them in his basement," Rashad said of Bowerman, the Nike co-founder. "I'd wear them until they would fall apart, then he would make another pair."

3. In addition to himself and Prefontaine and NFL Hall-of-Famers such as Norm Van Brocklin, Dave Wilcox and Mel Renfro, the University of Oregon is also known as the home of Animal House, which was shot at the Eugene campus. But in recent years, the school's colorful football uniforms have almost become more popular than John "Bluto " Blutarsky and Delta House fraternity.

I asked Rashad if he would have worn one of those not-so-mellow-yellow Ducks' football uniforms had they been in vogue during the tie-dyed era.

"I would have worn anything with 'University of Oregon' written on it," he said.

But what about Fouts, his college quarterback?

"I think he would have liked them, too. Those uniforms would have made him look sleek."

4. Rashad said that while he went to college during a really important time in United States history (Vietnam War, racial strife, etc.), people shouldn't assume he was being rebellious by converting to the Islamic faith. He simply believed in what it stood for. Rashad said he was fortunate in that his coach at Oregon, Jerry Frei, was always encouraging his players to become involved in campus life beyond football.

"He thought the worst thing you could do is stand back and do nothing," said Rashad, whose Muslim name means "admirable one led to truth."

5. In a 1980 game against the Browns, Rashad came down with a Hail Mary pass from Tommy Kramer that resulted in a Central Division title for the Vikings. But he said that paled in comparison to having tea with former South African President Nelson Mandela during Thanksgiving.

"In terms of humanity, there's nothing (I've done) that falls into that category," Rashad said.