Prince of the City

Two years ago, on one of his last visits to the USC campus, the late John McKay attended a dinner honoring his 1974 national championship team. Amid the festivities, he turned to an athletic department official and commented on the fact the Trojans had eight straight losses to UCLA.

“You know what?” he said. “I’d find a way to win that game. I don’t care if I lost all the rest of them, I’d focus on that one.”

It was an unexpected comment from a legendary coach who was always most closely associated with another USC rival, Notre Dame. After all, McKay had grown up Catholic and many of his biggest victories--and defeats--came against the Irish. But former players and assistants say that while Notre Dame might have been his favorite opponent, UCLA was the game he had to win.

“Remember, for a long time only one team from the [conference] went to a bowl game,” former USC quarterback Pat Haden explained. “You win, you’re in the Rose Bowl. You lose and you’re out.”

Most often, McKay won. Over the course of his college coaching career, from 1960 to 1975, he amassed a 10-5-1 record in the cross-town rivalry.

“Coach McKay had such a tremendous presence,” says Terry Donahue, former UCLA coach and now general manager of the San Francisco 49ers. “There was an aura around him.”

Friends and family will pay tribute to that legacy at a memorial service on the USC campus today. Haden will speak, as will Athletic Director Mike Garrett and long-time assistants Marv Goux and Dave Levy. They will probably tell stories about McKay, who died at 77 in June, and recount some of his famous quips. They might also recall his role in the fierce rivalry--the Trojans and Bruins play for the 71st time Saturday--and how beating UCLA was McKay’s first big coaching victory.

He was a surprise hire in 1960, an Oregon assistant dubbed “Mr. Who” by one Los Angeles newspaper. The Trojans started 3-5 that season and his one-year contract seemed tenuous.

But with sophomore quarterback Bill Nelsen and end Marlin McKeever, the team found a way to upset the 11th-ranked Bruins, 17-6, on homecoming day. According to the book “60 Years of USC-UCLA Football” by Steve Springer and Mike Arkush, McKay said of the game: “It only saved my job.”

If the victory found a place in the young coach’s heart, the next few years served to get UCLA under his skin. Oddly enough, the rivalry heated up because of something that occurred hundreds of miles north.

In 1964, the AAWU--a precursor to the Pacific 10--had yet to develop a tiebreaking formula for teams with identical records. So when USC and Oregon State tied for the title, a vote was called to determine the Rose Bowl representative.

Oregon State won and McKay was bitter.

“I thought it was a tremendous miscarriage of justice,” he wrote in his autobiography, “McKay: A Coach’s Story.”

The beneficiary of that vote, Oregon State Coach Tommy Prothro, took over at UCLA the following season. It was the beginning of what USC assistant athletic director Jim Perry called “a tremendous rivalry.”

“They respected each other,” said Perry, who previously covered the Trojans as a sportswriter, served as USC’s sports information director and co-wrote McKay’s autobiography. “But they didn’t really like each other.”

Prothro always carried a briefcase and McKay thought him arrogant for it, former quarterback and assistant Craig Fertig said. In that first meeting, in 1965, USC dominated the action but led by only two points late in the game when UCLA recovered an onside kick. Pepper Rodgers, a Bruin assistant at the time, spoke to quarterback Gary Beban over the headphones, calling for receiver Kurt Altenberg to go deep while Mel Farr swung underneath.

“I want you to hit Mel Farr,” the assistant said.

“Yes sir,” the quarterback replied.

Beban took the snap and threw long to Altenberg for the winning touchdown. Rodgers chuckles at the memory--”Great coaching, huh?”--but he knows how painful the moment was for McKay. There would be no Rose Bowl for the Trojans and their senior captain, Garrett.

It wasn’t like McKay to say much to his players, but after the game he apologized to Garrett, his Heisman Trophy-winning tailback: “Sorry we didn’t win that one for you.”

Better days were to come. The 1967 game was a classic, USC upsetting the top-ranked Bruins, 21-20, on O.J. Simpson’s 64-yard run, among the most famous plays in college football history. “Well, gentlemen,” McKay said afterward, “I guess I wasn’t so stupid today.” In 1969, the Trojans again prevailed over an undefeated UCLA team, 14-12.

Anyone who doubted McKay’s feelings for the rivalry needed only to watch his team before the season began. The Bruins ran the wishbone under Rodgers in the early 1970s so McKay had his players practice against that scheme the last week of spring and during two-a-days in summer. “You think he cared?” Goux says.

More than just the Rose Bowl was at stake. The teams shared the Coliseum and, as Fertig recalls, McKay used to tell his players: “You guys go to the same beaches as them and the same shows and hopefully try to date the same girls ... we have to win the UCLA game because we have to live with them.”

Big game week began the moment the Trojans finished with their preceding opponent.

“You sensed it in the locker room,” said Haden, who played for McKay from 1972-74. “Coach McKay would dismiss the win we had just fifteen minutes before, now focused on UCLA.”

The coach was more animated in meetings. On the practice field, where he often shuttled from one drill to another in a golf cart, he would more likely jump out and walk among his players. There would be no motivational talks, however, no fiery speeches. As Haden said: “It was one of those games you didn’t have to talk about.”

McKay’s final years in the rivalry were among his most successful, with USC winning the Rose Bowl and the national championship in 1972 and 1974. The likes of Anthony Davis, Lynn Swann, Richard Wood and Haden scored big victories over the Bruins. But McKay’s final UCLA game--in 1975--was one of his most disappointing.

The Trojans raced to a 7-0 record and a No. 3 ranking that fall. Then came rumors their coach was planning to jump to the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the NFL. Midway through the season, McKay made it official.

It was, he later acknowledged, a mistake.

The Trojans fell apart, losing to California, then Stanford and Washington. By the time the rivalry came around, they had tumbled out of the rankings. And though No. 14 UCLA fumbled eight times in the game, the Bruins held a slim lead as USC mounted a late drive.

Donahue, a UCLA assistant at the time, recalls that McKay might have tried for a long field goal to tie the score, which would have knocked the Bruins out of the Rose Bowl. Instead, USC went for the touchdown. “It really spoke volumes about the kind of man and the kind of coach he was,” Donahue said.

The Trojans came up short and lost McKay’s final college game in the Coliseum, 25-22. The players insisted his departure was not to blame, but the coach knew better.

“When you start thinking of those things rather than winning,” he said, “I don’t think you’re as well prepared as you should be.”

It might have been the only season a McKay team was not prepared for the Bruins. Nine times during his tenure, USC and UCLA met with a Rose Bowl on the line for both teams. USC won six of those games. Goux says: “It meant a great deal to him.”

One of those critical meetings came in 1973, when UCLA was 9-1 and ranked eighth in the nation. Before the kickoff, Bruin players ran into the Coliseum waving roses to the crowd. McKay, whose team scored a 23-13 upset that day, was not impressed.

“Look at those silly guys,” he quipped to his assistants. “They actually think they can win.”

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Remembering McKay

John McKay’s Memorial Service:

* Where: USC’s Bovard Auditorium.

* When: Today, 2:30 p.m.

* Donations: In lieu of flowers, the McKay family requested contributions be made to the USC athletic department for the John H. McKay Scholarship Fund.

* Notes: Service is open to the public. Speakers include USC Athletic Director Mike Garrett, USC President Steven Sample and former USC quarterback Pat Haden. A reception at Heritage Hall follows the service. Parking available at Gate 1 (Exposition and Watt) and Gate 6 (Vermont and 36th).

*

All-time victories by USC coaches: John McKay

(1960-75) 127-40-8 .749

Howard Jones

(1925-40) 121-36-13 .750

John Robinson

(1976-82, 93-97) 104-35-4 .741

Newell Cravath

(1942-50) 54-28-8 .644

Elmer Henderson

(1919-24) 45-7-0 .865

Jess Hill

(1951-56) 45-17-1 .722

Larry Smith

(1987-92) 44-25-3 .632

*

Coaches with most Division I-A national titles:

6 Bear Bryant Alabama

4 John McKay USC

4 Frank Leahy Notre Dame

3 Barry Switzer Oklahoma

3 Bud Wilkinson Oklahoma

3 Tom Osborne Nebraska

3 Paul Bierman Minnesota

3 Darrell Royal Texas

3 Woody Hayes Ohio State

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JOHN McKAY FILE

USC HEAD COACH: 16 Years (1960-75)

RECORD: 127-40-8, best at USC

NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS: Four (1962, 1967, 1972, 1974)

UNDEFEATED SEASONS: Three (1962, 1969, 1972)

ROSE BOWL VICTORIES: Five (1963, 1968, 1970, 1973, 1975)

BOWL APPEARANCES: Nine

NATIONAL COACH OF YEAR: Two times (1962, 1972)

THE PLAYERS: Coached 40 All-Americans, two Heisman Trophy winners