UCLA RACKS UP THE TITLES : A WINNING FORMULA : Location, Coaches and Athletes Add Up to Successful Program

College athletes by and large--and some of them are quite large--don’t just walk. They dribble, pass, swim, putt, pitch, spike and volley their way through those halls of ivy, which they visit on their way to the training table. Inside the brick buildings, the plan is for a four-year stay. Here, let us pitch a tent. Camp us.

Things are no different at the school in the tiny burg of Westwood, where sports are getting along so swimmingly--and not just in the pool either--that no one is worried about negative buoyancy. Sinking is out of the question at UCLA. The real buzz word right now is winning, and plenty of it.

So if all of the top college sports programs were lined up, which one would stand tallest?

UCLA.

Intercollegiate athletics is riding a pretty nice wave at the school. This may be entirely appropriate, since the campus is only about 6 miles from the Pacific Ocean, as UCLA coaches happily inform recruits.

“Heat is never a problem this close to the ocean,” said men’s track Coach Bob Larsen, who then added more to the shopping list: “Bel-Air, Brentwood, Beverly Hills and Westwood Village, of course.”

Of course. Location is very important. This year, UCLA’s athletes liked where they were so much they went out and won national championships in men’s golf, men’s track and field, and women’s softball.

In the last 19 years, UCLA has won 38 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. men’s championships. The women have won four NCAA titles in softball and seven overall since 1982. UCLA’s men’s and women’s programs swept the Knoxville (Tenn.) Journal’s all-sports survey this year, the first time a school has won both divisions in the same year since the survey began 18 years ago.

Eight times in 19 years, UCLA has won at least three NCAA titles. It won four championships twice, and in 1981-82, UCLA won five NCAA championships. No other school has ever done that.

Those titles reflect a commitment to a broad-based program of athletics, a program that considers the breadth of the college experience, and not just the bottom line of the athletic department budget, according to Peter Dalis, UCLA athletic director.

So unlike some of the major colleges that concentrate effort and expenditures on making winning ventures of the revenue-producing sports--meaning football and basketball--UCLA shares the wealth, according to Dalis, who said UCLA also expends effort and money in the academic support system.

“We should recruit on a national level, compete on a national level and attempt to win national titles. That’s a very costly proposition. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to do because of the cost of running a broad-based program.”

Across the country, athletic departments are run on television money. That money has been dwindling since the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that the NCAA did not have the right to regulate television contracts. It was every school for itself. Now there are more games on more channels, but less money because advertisers know that the audience has been spread thin.

“Our high-water mark in television revenue was 1983-84,” Dalis said. “We now have a million dollars less than we had then. That’s why I say that, although we are philosophically committed to a broad program, I wonder how long we can maintain it.”

Athletic directors everywhere are wondering. And some are dropping what they call the “non-revenue” sports.

In order to exist, all sports need funding. But money alone can’t buy the happiness of NCAA titles. There have to be other secrets of success.

Is there any secret to UCLA’s athletic success? If there is, it’s two words.

“Good athletes,” said Sharron Backus, the women’s softball coach. “We can only do so much as coaches. If you don’t have the athlete who can perform at the level you’re requesting, it’s like beating your head against the wall. They give you their heart, and you’re going to win some, but you’re not going to consistently win the big ones.”

Where do the good athletes come from?

“We don’t have to go very far,” said Judith Holland, a senior associate athletic director at UCLA and the primary administrator of women’s sports.

Football Coach Terry Donahue said there usually isn’t much of a problem getting recruits interested in UCLA, because many of them already are. The lure of Southern California and of Los Angeles is often appealing to recruits, he said.

But if interest is not a problem, getting the students into school often is. Being a member of the respected UC system helps in recruiting, but admission standards at UCLA are higher than any other Pacific 10 Conference school except Stanford and about the same as California’s. Nationwide, Proposition 48 established the minimum college admission scores for most athletes, a 2.0 (C) average in basic or “core” courses coupled with a 700 score in the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

“We don’t even come close to taking somebody like that,” Holland said.

Although she said there are no strict guidelines for test scores, Holland said UCLA uses regular university admission guidelines for its athletes. “We try not to get too far away from that because those are the kids our athletes are going to be competing with in the classroom,” she said.

Holland said the basic guidelines are an 850 score on the SAT and close to a 3.0 grade-point average.

Because UCLA’s admissions policy is tight, the school often cannot recruit some of the athletes it wants.

“This is a big problem,” Larsen said. “It would be very difficult for other schools to catch us if it weren’t for the difficulty of getting students into UCLA.”

Donahue said, however, that UCLA’s success in sports indicates that the school’s admissions guidelines, shaped by Chancellor Charles Young, have not had an adverse effect.

“Our success has not really been altered,” Donahue said. “In fact, maybe it’s been enhanced. Certainly it would be arguable that as the admission standards have gotten tougher, the program has been more successful.

“Policy like that is always dictated by a lot of higher sources than the football coach. It’s like any other policy. You just come to accept it and believe it. In our particular case, I think it’s good.”

UCLA has never accepted a Proposition 48 athlete, but Proposition 48 did not exist six years ago when UCLA was embarrassed by an incident involving a former football player named Billy Don Jackson.

A widely recruited athlete from Sherman, Tex., Jackson played on a scholarship at UCLA in 1977-79. In 1982, Jackson was sentenced to a year in jail after pleading no contest in the fatal stabbing of a drug dealer.

The judge presiding at Jackson’s trial called him a “functional illiterate” and ordered him to take remedial reading and writing.

Dalis said he did not know how Jackson could have been admitted to the school in light of the stringent entrance requirements that the university prides itself on.

“That was before my time,” Dalis said.

There hasn’t been an embarrassment like that since.

Dalis has embarked on a wide-ranging tutoring program that is the cornerstone of an academic support group for UCLA athletes. Fred Stroock, a senior assistant athletic director who deals in admissions and tutoring, said the 80 tutors for UCLA athletes operate on an annual budget of $200,000.

Once the athletes are in school, the rest is up to them and their coaches. What has been happening at UCLA is hardly much of a secret, Donahue said.

“The quality of the coaches is good, the caliber of the athletes is good, so consequently, it is a tough combination to beat,” he said.

Times staff writer Tracy Dodds contributed to this story.