100 Things UCLA Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die

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Contents

Foreword by Gail Goodrich

Foreword by Kenny Easley

Introduction

1. John Wooden

2. Jackie Robinson

3. Lew Alcindor

4. Bill Walton

5. Arthur Ashe

6. Gary Beban

7. Rafer Johnson

8. Jackie and Flo-Jo

9. Troy Aikman

10. 4.8 Seconds

11. Reggie Miller

12. Gail Goodrich

13. Lisa Fernandez

14. Kenny Washington

15. Karch Kiraly

16. Meb Keflezighi

17. Kenny Easley

18. Al Scates

19. Russell Westbrook

20. Don MacLean

21. See a Game at Pauley Pavilion

22. Walt Hazzard

23. The 1963–64 National Championship

24. Keith Erickson

25. The 1964–65 National Championship

26. Lucius Allen

27. The 1966–67 National Championship

28. A Rainy Night in Westwood

29. The 1967–68 National Championship

30. Sidney Wicks

31. The 1968–69 National Championship

32. Henry Bibby

33. The 1969–70 National Championship

34. The 1970–71 National Championship

35. Keith Wilkes

36. 1971–72 National Basketball Championship

37. The 88-Game Winning Streak

38. The 1972–73 National Championship

39. Marques Johnson

40. The 1974–75 National Basketball Championship

41. David Greenwood

42. The Pyramid of Success

43. The O’Bannon Brothers

44. The 1994–95 National Basketball Championship

45. Henry Russell Red Sanders

46. The 1954 National Football Championship

47. Tommy Prothro

48. 1966 Rose Bowl

49. Ann Meyers

50. The 1978 AIAW National Championship

51. Cade McNown

52. 20-Game Winning Streak

53. The Hurricane Bowl

54. Chris Chambliss

55. Do the Frisbee Cheer

56. Visit the Athletic Hall of Fame

57. Sinjin Smith

58. Chase Utley

59. J.D. Morgan

60. Dave Roberts

61. Brett Hundley

62. See a Game at the Rose Bowl

63. John Sciarra and Mark Harmon

64. The 1976 Rose Bowl

65. Jerry Robinson

66. Sing the Fight Songs

67. Gerrit Cole

68. Visit Jackie Robinson Stadium

69. 2013 College World Series Champions

70. Woody Strode

71. Don Barksdale

72. Alumni Game for the Ages

73. Bob Waterfield

74. Myles Jack

75. Donn Moomaw

76. Dick Linthicum

77. Burr Baldwin

78. Jonathan Ogden

79. Terry Donahue

80. The Unlikely Rose Bowl

81. Meet Joe and Josephine Bruin

82. Randy Cross

83. Bill Kilmer

84. The Steve Lavin Years

85. Kevin Love

86. Three Consecutive Final Fours

87. Meet at The Bruin

88. Ducky Drake

89. Eat at John Wooden’s Breakfast Spot

90. John Barnes

91. First to 100 NCAA Team Titles

92. Anthony Barr

93. Johnathan Franklin

94. Walk the Concourse Inside Pauley Pavilion

95. Eric Kendricks

96. The Game That Would Never End

97. Visit John Wooden’s Den

98. Lonzo Ball

99. The Comeback

100. The Hiring of Chip Kelly

Acknowledgments

Sources

Foreword by Gail Goodrich

My love affair with UCLA began in the spring of 1960, following my junior year in high school. That was when I received a letter from Jerry Norman, UCLA’s assistant basketball coach, expressing interest in my basketball potential. In late October of that year, coach John Wooden invited my dad and me to visit the UCLA campus and watch practice. Wooden also offered me a basketball scholarship. Needless to say, I was thrilled. My dream growing up in Southern California, only 16 miles from The Hills of Westwood, was to play college basketball. Coach Wooden had just given me the opportunity to pursue my dream.

UCLA is a very unique institution—a school with a reputation for excellence in academics, research, and diversity as well as tremendous athletic accomplishments. My parents always stressed the need for higher education and knowledge. UCLA was perfect for me. It was the place where I was able to experience college life, grow as an individual, expand my horizons, and begin the journey that would enable me to meet challenges later in life.

During my years at UCLA, the basketball program began to excel. We won consecutive national championships in 1964 and ’65. We were a group of players from totally diverse backgrounds who came together and coalesced into a real team to reach a common goal. Life lessons were learned from Coach Wooden in the pursuit of perfection. Who could forget Coach’s annual tutorial on how to put on your socks and lace up your sneakers? Furthermore, never to be forgotten are Wooden’s daily afternoon practice admonitions: Be quick, but don’t hurry, Make every day your masterpiece, and Goodness gracious sakes alive with every mistake.

Our team formed lasting friendships. A special bond of shared experiences and enduring respect exists to this day. The 1960s were a time of unrest in the country, but there was a sense of pride and excitement among the students when it came to UCLA basketball. It was the beginning of 10 championships in 12 years for the Bruins. UCLA became the most prestigious college basketball school in the country.

UCLA also experienced athletic excellence on the football field, with Rose Bowl appearances, as well as track and field championships and national titles in other sports. Such notable athletes as Arthur Ashe, Jackie Robinson, Rafer Johnson, and Kenny Washington provided outstanding performances while at UCLA and in the years to follow. Since the 1960s, the Bruins have in many ways dominated college sports, becoming the first university to reach 100 NCAA championships.

UCLA provided me with incredible memories I will always cherish. There were enjoyable times spent with teammates, fraternity brothers, and friends with whom I shared both campus life and leisure time in Westwood Village, which was a huge part of college life. Whatever the interest, UCLA offers something for everyone.

The school has grown tremendously through the years with the expansion of its facilities. College athletics has changed in recent years with emphasis on athletics as a business. For me, however, college athletics will always be about preparation, competition, and perseverance toward victory on the playing field.

This book is a series of vignettes of famous UCLA players, coaches, games, and things to do. It documents many of the accomplishments by the Bruins in all sports and is a must read for all of the school’s alumni and fans.

—Gail Goodrich

Foreword by Kenny Easley

As a senior at Oscar Smith High School in Chesapeake, Virginia, I’d told anyone who would listen that I was going to attend and play football for the University of Michigan. However, in the presence of my high school classmates and teachers assembled in the high school auditorium one morning in February 1977, I announced that I would attend UCLA. Gasps could be heard. Confusion reigned. Asked by friends and coaches afterward why I said UCLA, I told them I did not know. Perhaps it was divine intervention, but as they say, the proverbial cat was now out of the bag and there was no turning back.

I walked onto the campus of UCLA for the second time in July 1977, a few days before my first college football training camp was to begin. My first trip to UCLA had been during my official visit as a recruit in December 1976. My goal was to survey the area and take in the beauty of the campus. I was housed with the other freshman football players in Dykstra Hall, upwind from Drake Stadium (where the track and field team practiced and competed) and Spaulding Field (where football practices would be held). It was an easy walk down the hill going to practice, but a torturous walk up the hill after two-a-day practice sessions.

Fall classes wouldn’t commence until after we’d played two games in September, winning one and losing one. The Monday morning after the second game—a 17–7 victory for the Bruins against the University of Kansas—a mass of humanity of all stripes was now moving about the campus of UCLA. I remember my first class, History 101b, where there were more people in the lecture hall than in my entire high school at Oscar Smith. Blew my mind! However, I was now also the starting free safety for the UCLA Bruins and playing with only a minimum amount of confidence, as I had to speed learn the defensive coverages because I was also charged with making the secondary calls. And that was much harder than starting as a freshman free safety.

Although my freshman season was literally a blur, I managed to lead what was then the Pacific-8 Conference with seven interceptions. I was named first team All-Pac-8 and Freshman Defensive Player of the Year, but we lost a nail-biter to Southern Cal, 29–27, and a chance to play in the Rose Bowl. In fact, my biggest disappointment over my four years as a Bruin football player was that I never played in a Rose Bowl game. After the ’77 season, I worked really hard to build up my body, as I had entered UCLA weighing only 177 pounds. I now knew I would not last long at this level if I did not add some weight and muscle to my frame.

Reminiscing now about the 1978 season, when I was a sophomore, we were good enough on defense to make a run at the national championship. I had put on 12 pounds (now weighing 189), shaved probably 1.2 seconds off my 40-yard-dash time, grown two inches, and was a much stronger player. We started the season with a great 10–7 victory over the Washington Huskies in Seattle, as I blocked a punt and Brian Baggott recovered it in the end zone for a touchdown and the win. (Interestingly, this would also be when Jack Patera, the Seattle Seahawks’ coach, said he started thinking about drafting me.) After eventually improving our record to 7–1, we lost back-to-back games against Oregon State (15–13) and Southern Cal (17–10) that we should have won. We went to the Fiesta Bowl and finished in a 10–10 tie with Arkansas to conclude our season with an 8–3–1 record, Oh, well! Anyway, I made my first consensus All-American team in 1978.

I did six things really well over the next two years at UCLA—I played good, confident football; I got bigger; I got better; I got stronger; I got faster; and I made All-American teams in ’79 and ’80. When the pro scouts came to UCLA for my pro day in March 1981, I was 6'2½" and 210 pounds of sheer terror coming at a ball carrier from a 12-yard head start. UCLA had given me an opportunity to compete and play free safety as a freshman and I seized it and put a stranglehold on the position for the next four years. In 1980, we finally defeated Southern Cal, 20–17, and that was the best gift I could have received as a departing senior.

As a four-year starter from the second game of my freshman season, I had also left a legacy with UCLA football that every free safety afterward for at least the next 10 years would try to duplicate. Free safeties Don Rogers (1980–83), James Washington (1984–87), Eric Turner (1987–90), Shaun Williams (1994–97), and Rahim Moore (2008–10) were each All-American players and high draft picks in the NFL. For a time, UCLA was producing so many quality free safeties that pro scouts started calling it Free Safety University.

Anyway, I may have slipped and said UCLA in 1977 when announcing where I would go to college, but I now have no doubts, UCLA is where I was destined to be.

—Kenny Easley

Introduction

The moment I learned I would no longer be covering UCLA basketball for the Los Angeles Times, I did what came naturally.

I cried.

It was the summer of 2011 and I was returning from the Las Vegas summer high school club basketball tournaments, where I had been following Bruins prospect Shabazz Muhammad and other top recruits. As I walked down the packed aisle of a Southwest Airlines flight toward the jet bridge at Los Angeles International Airport, my cell phone buzzed. It was Times sports editor Mike James.

With a tone that told me he was not calling to exchange pleasantries, he said a heavy hello before delivering the news: Hall of Fame national NBA writer Mark Heisler had been laid off and I was being tabbed to replace him. I wasn’t able to fully process the meaning of it all in the moment, overcome by a jumble of emotions. I was relieved to be keeping my job but devastated that one of my favorite writers was being forced out the door in the latest wave of gut-punching layoffs (thankfully, Heisler would soon be inundated with more work than he could handle).

It wasn’t until the cab was inching along a few miles up Interstate 405 toward home that it hit me and the tears began to flow. The worst part wasn’t that my heart wasn’t in the NBA at the time. Nor was it that the prospect of replacing Heisler was a bit like journeyman Pete Myers trying to replace Michael Jordan with the Chicago Bulls. The biggest disappointment was that there would be no more UCLA. No more Pauley Pavilion. No more NCAA tournaments. No more of the fun that can only come from covering the most storied team in all of college athletics.

I also knew that UCLA basketball was just part of a much broader legacy. I had come to learn bits and pieces of the history of Bruins athletics since first writing about the school’s football and basketball teams on an occasional basis for the Times in 2004. It wasn’t until starting my research for 100 Things UCLA Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die that I became fully aware of just how impressive that legacy is.

A thought struck me one day while flipping through stacks of yellowed newspaper clippings and rumpled photos inside UCLA’s athletic archive room. The Bruins could boast of having produced not just the Jackie Robinson of the NBA (Don Barksdale) and the Jackie Robinson of the NFL (Kenny Washington), but Jackie Robinson himself. What other college athletic program could claim such a pioneering trio?

My dad used to tell me that UCLA was a university for the people and what he meant was, a person that was an African American, a person that was Hispanic, or someone that was a minority would be welcome at a place like this, UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero told me in January 2018. And that resonated with me. So I was always a UCLA fan when I was a young boy.

There has been plenty to cheer. John Wooden is widely considered the greatest coach in the history of college sports, but there was another man on his own campus who won nearly twice as many NCAA championships, in volleyball coach Al Scates. The Rose Bowl is the most picturesque and storied setting in college football and Pauley Pavilion has been home to more men’s basketball national championship teams than any other college venue.

When I interviewed Jackie Joyner-Kersee for a chapter on herself and fellow Bruins track star Florence Griffith Joyner, I asked if she had become a celebrity upon returning to campus after winning a silver medal in the 1984 Summer Olympics. I was stunned when she suggested it was no big deal. One of the great things about UCLA was that there were Olympians across the board in every sport, Joyner-Kersee said. It was like being part of a family.

There are so many amazing players and coaches to have come through UCLA that, given a few more years, I could have written 1,000 Things UCLA Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die. The list of luminaries not included in this book includes Hall of Famers and Olympic gold medalists. UCLA’s athletic tradition is so rich that I couldn’t make room for scores of deserving stars and coaches. There were just too many. And perhaps that’s my only regret in writing this book.

But I’m thrilled to be back around the Bruins on a daily basis. Times sports editor Angel Rodriguez granted my request to return to UCLA in the summer of 2016 as the beat writer for all Bruins sports. I had asked off the NBA not only to travel less but to return to a place where my heart belonged, covering the world’s top college athletic program. I hope I’m just getting started.

—Ben Bolch

April 2018

1. John Wooden

In his final years, as he sat in a recliner inside his condominium penning monthly love letters to his late wife and autographing fan mail that he sometimes paid the postage to return, John Wooden answered a telethon’s worth of phone calls from his former UCLA players.

Sometimes they would call just to check in on the coach. On other occasions they wanted to hear his reassuring words of wisdom. There was a telepathic tone when Wooden said Hello.

Whenever you called Coach Wooden, it was like he was just expecting your call, said Jamaal Wilkes, who went by Keith Wilkes when he starred at small forward for the Bruins. I mean, to a man, that’s what all the guys say about him. It was like he knew you were going to call.

It must have been a skill that Wooden developed late in life, because he never anticipated the call that would have drastically changed the course of UCLA history, not to mention the power structure in college basketball for parts of four decades.

In 1948, Wooden was a fast-rising coach at Indiana State Teachers College mulling tentative job offers from Minnesota and UCLA, when the Golden Gophers, his preferred choice, called to tell him they would meet his condition that he hire his own assistant. Wooden wanted to accept. Problem was, the call came later than expected after a snowstorm had prevented Frank McCormick, Minnesota’s athletic director, from reaching Wooden at the scheduled time.

Only minutes earlier, Wooden had fielded a call from UCLA and, figuring that Minnesota was not interested in his services, agreed to coach the Bruins. A man of conviction, Wooden kept his word even after the offer he truly wanted came from Minnesota.

Wooden would go on to guide UCLA to an unprecedented 10 national championships, including seven in a row from 1967 to 1973. He was equally iconic as a life coach whose Pyramid of Success transcended basketball and inspired a nation.

He saw himself as a teacher first, which he was, Wilkes said. He was an English teacher and he had a way with words. He could say so much in so few words and it applied to so many different situations.

The man who liked to be called Coach had developed a taste for simplicity growing up on a farm in rural Indiana. The family home had no running water or electricity and the first basketball Wooden used consisted of old rags stuffed into black cotton stockings. He would shoot at a tomato basket with the bottom knocked out inside the hayloft of a barn.

Wooden showed an early aptitude for baseball as well as basketball but had to give up the former sport because of injuries. He starred in basketball at Martinsville High before going on to Purdue, where he learned many of his detail-oriented ways from coach Ward Lewis Piggy Lambert. A wiry 5'10½" and 178 pounds, Wooden earned a reputation for tenacious play and became the first three-time consensus All-American.

He graduated in 1932 and married his high school sweetheart, Nell Riley, while accepting his first coaching job at Dayton High in Kentucky, where he also taught English. A coaching stop at South Bend Central followed before Wooden provided fitness training to combat fighters as a Navy lieutenant in World War II. Wooden’s first college coaching job came after the war at Indiana State Teachers College (now Indiana State University), where he led the Sycamores to a 44–15 record in two seasons.

March 31, 1975: Coach Wooden wears the net around his neck after UCLA defeated Kentucky 92–85 to win the national championship. (AP Photo/File)

The call to coach UCLA in 1948, at age 37, was hardly akin to assuming control of a basketball power. The Bruins had posted a winning record in only three of the 21 seasons immediately preceding Wooden’s arrival, so their capturing the Pacific Coast Conference’s Southern Division in his first season was widely viewed as a breakthrough. The Bruins posted a winning record in each of the next 12 seasons but never made it past the first round in any of their three NCAA tournament appearances.

Wooden was laying the groundwork for something much bigger. It came in the way he taught his players to pull their socks tight to avoid blisters and repeated sayings such as Be quick but don’t hurry and Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

When I went there as a 17-year-old, I knew he would make me a better basketball player, but I didn’t realize how much influence he would have on [me] in terms of how I approached life, because he was a teacher, said guard Gail Goodrich, who played for Wooden from 1962 to ’65. He taught us principles and things like that that you could carry on in your life.

Goodrich was the leading scorer on the team that finally broke through during the 1963–64 season, going from unranked in the preseason to stunning Duke in the national championship game while posting a 30–0 record. That started a run of unparalleled success, with the Bruins winning back-to-back titles to transform Westwood into Title Town for more than a decade.

Players respected Wooden but didn’t always like him or his strict adherence to a set of principles that often ran counter to the desires of young men yearning to fully explore the freedoms of college life.

He had all these rules and all this stuff and he was very subtle, but he was very demanding and strict, recalled forward Sidney Wicks, who played on three national championship teams. He would tell you, ‘Hey, this is how we play here, this is what we do, so I’m just letting you know this is how we do things.’ And then you had to find your way in that system; the system doesn’t change for individuals. It expands for you, but it doesn’t change and you have to stay within the parameters of what they were trying to do.

Wooden was a master of psychology, sternly pushing those who needed prodding while taking a softer approach with players whose psyches were more delicate. Everyone knew to be on their best behavior when Coach blew his whistle and yelled, Goodness gracious sakes alive!

He knew how to communicate and motivate players based on their personality, Goodrich said. I was the type of person who probably didn’t take a lot of yelling nicely. I would drop my head, so he wouldn’t embarrass me in front of the other players.

Wilkes once went to see Wooden, fully intending to quit the team over the intense pressure he felt, before being calmed by an impromptu poetry recital.

I came away so refreshed and I just couldn’t believe he did that, Wilkes said. Then, of course, the next day it was back to practice, but that’s what I remember most. The only thing that made it sane was Coach Wooden, his approach, his philosophy—‘Do your best.’

The Bruins usually did, beating Kentucky to win a 10th national title in Wooden’s final game in 1975 after he had surprised many two days earlier by announcing his retirement. Some argued that he became even more influential after leaving the sideline, inspiring a legion of admirers with his philosophies, which were applicable to many other endeavors besides basketball.

Wooden became the first person inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. In 2003, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given to a civilian. That same year, the court inside Pauley Pavilion was rededicated as Nell and John Wooden Court.

Wooden remained a fixture at UCLA home games long after his retirement, sitting behind the Bruins bench. He died at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center on June 4, 2010, prompting the school to permanently retire his seat. A statue of Wooden clutching a rolled-up program stands outside Pauley Pavilion, the coach still inspiring to this day.

He really saw himself training young people first and foremost, Wilkes said. Now, he wanted to win, don’t get me wrong—he was a very competitive, feisty guy—but he truly saw himself as a teacher first and that was how he ran his program. With all the expectations, the stresses, the winning streak, the undercurrent of everything that’s going on when you basically have a group of teenagers in a major media market with all the distractions, it was him that held it all together.

2. Jackie Robinson

The man who would go on to break Major League Baseball’s color barrier did not represent a racial first for UCLA athletics.

When Jackie Robinson transferred from Pasadena Junior College (as Pasadena City College was known then) to join the Bruins’ football team in the fall of 1939, UCLA already had black stars Kenny Washington and Woody Strode gracing its roster. Robinson’s arrival did represent confirmation of the school’s forward-thinking ways, which were not shared nationally… or even locally.

Robinson and Ray Bartlett, who accompanied Robinson in making the move from PJC to UCLA, picked their new school in part because they did not feel welcome at crosstown rival USC. We knew USC was prejudiced over there because they didn’t have Negros playing sports, Bartlett told the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student newspaper. UCLA was more friendly and gave us the area and type of opportunities that we wanted.

Prejudice proved an inescapable part of their experiences, however. UCLA had to play all of the Texas schools on its schedule at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum because black players were not accepted in the South. Robinson and Bartlett also encountered racism in Northern California during a trip to play Stanford in 1939 when they were the only two players who were refused service. The entire group departed together, leaving one penny as payment.

Robinson once groused that he never felt fully embraced at UCLA except when he was starring on the field. Of course, given his prowess as the first four-sport letterman in school history, that was a good chunk of his time on campus.

Robinson, the grandson of a slave and son of sharecroppers, was born in Cairo, Georgia, in 1919. He moved to Pasadena with his mother and siblings in search of a better life when he was just an infant. Though he would famously ignore physical and verbal abuse while playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers years later, young Jackie had no tolerance for racist insults.

When a white girl called him the n-word, he responded by calling her cracker. When the girl’s father emerged and began throwing rocks at Robinson, he picked them up and threw them right back. Willa Mae Robinson, Jackie’s sister, would say that his talent for throwing a football and baseball came from those less-than-sporting exchanges.

Robinson gave fans a teaser of sorts when he played four sports at Muir Technical High School before going on to Pasadena Junior College, where he attained national fame by leaping 25'61/3" in the long jump. Duke Snider, who would later become Robinson’s Brooklyn teammate, recalled Robinson once leaving one of his junior college baseball games in the middle of an inning to go compete in the long jump while still in uniform, only to return to the baseball game as if nothing unusual had happened.

Robinson’s exploits were so well known that a Stanford alumnus, realizing Robinson could shatter his alma mater’s hopes in four sports, offered to pay for his education in any Eastern college you choose, so long as it’s not on Stanford’s schedule.

Robinson starred primarily in football and basketball at UCLA and did what he could for the baseball and track teams in the spring, given the overlap in schedules, not to mention growing fatigue. The shortstop’s finest moment on the diamond was undoubtedly his debut, when he went 4-for-4 and stole four bases, including home, against Los Angeles City College. But he would hit only .097 in his first and only baseball season, prompting many to regard it as his weakest sport.

Robinson enjoyed far more success in football. He averaged 12.24 yards per carry as a wingback in 1939 for the first unbeaten team in school history. The Bruins went 6–0–4, tying for