In Reply to: Your first UCLA-usc game? posted by lafong on November 22, 2024 at 11:57:36
Seventy years ago I sat by my father’s side, way high up in Section 29 on the sunny side, near the Peristyle end of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. It was the day the mighty UCLA Bruins gave USC a beat-down on their way to a share of the National Championship in 1954.
I was an eight-year-old boy, and already a stalwart UCLA football fan. Dad was a Pioneer Bruin. He had lettered as a quarter-miler on the Grizzlies track and field team in the ‘30’s and remained an avid Uclan until the day he died. I was broken-in early by Dad: I remember cheering for Paul Cameron during the ’53 season and was witness to the ’54 Bruins giving a football clinic to the Stanford Indians, beating them by an astonishing 72-0 a few weeks before the USC match-up. Every Sunday in football season I scoured the Mirror-News sports section for photos of Bruin players in action from the Saturday game, taping grainy images of my Bruin heroes in their Heisman-like poses to the wall behind my bed. I was a Bruin boy.
The UCLA-USC game in ’54 was played on a blazing hot day and to a packed house. I remember my Dad telling me he thought there were over 100,000 fans in the Coliseum to watch the epic battle between the undefeated Bruins and the one-loss Trojans. The Bruins had a stout defense, giving Troy only a few yards rushing and intercepting many errant passes. On offense, UCLA was like magic, unforgettable, when the team “serpentined” out of their huddle and into an old-style but potent, single-wing offensive formation.
From the “cheap seats”, and with only a little boy’s attention span, I recall spending a good part of the game pouring over the names and faces and stats in the “Goal Post”, the UCLA game day program. Things got interesting to me in the fourth quarter, when the Bruins poured it on and scored repeatedly, thrashing Troy 34-0. Fifty-two years later, like yesterday, I still remember the Bruin heroes from Red Sanders’s mighty squad: Primo Villanueva, Bob Davenport, Decker, Hardiman Curetan, Rommie Loudd, Heydenfeldt, Sam (“I like to hit, and get hit”) Bogoshian, Jack Ellena, “First Down” Sam Brown, and Salisbury, among others.
Since UCLA had played in the 1954 Rose Bowl game, the Bruins were ineligible to return in ’55 due to the “no-repeat” rule. Instead, the vanquished Trojans were Rose Bowl-bound. To this day, I remember a Bruin coed holding up a large, hand-printed sign for the crowd to see. It read, “We can’t go so we’re sending you!”
Let’s not repeat the gift to Fig Tech. Instead, let’s win and, with some luck, get a bowl game in 2024! Go Bruins! Beat the Trojans!