Golden Year Revisited

The year was 1954. The first nuclear-powered submarine was being launched. The hydrogen bomb was being tested in the South Pacific. The Supreme Court was ruling against racial segregation in schools.

And the UCLA Bruins were running over, around and through opponents en route to their only unbeaten and untied football season, claiming a share of their only national championship.

In the context of world events, the football season wasn’t so important, but it is still prominent in the minds of those who were part of a team that scored 367 points -- and gave up only 40 -- during a 9-0 season.

The squad was so deep that John Peterson, its captain, said that the second-string unit was probably its most formidable opponent, stressing that he didn’t mean to slight opposing teams.

“That’s just the way it was,” said Peterson, 72, who played center and defensive end. “We were the highest-scoring team in the nation, but I always remember the low number, 40 points.”

UCLA will honor the 1954 team during halftime of its homecoming game, Oct. 30 against Stanford. Fifty years ago, the Bruins won that game, 72-0, avenging their lone regular-season loss in 1953.

“In that game we just took [quarterback John] Brodie apart,” Peterson recalled. “We intercepted so many passes and ran them back it was unbelievable. It was a track meet.”

Brodie threw for 203 yards, but UCLA intercepted eight passes and the offense rushed for 418 yards.

“If this sort of thing keeps up, the district attorney will charge the Bruins with murder,” wrote The Times’ Jack Geyer, after the Bruins had trounced Oregon, 41-0.

For fans, the historic campaign served as a pleasant distraction to other realities the world was facing. The Korean War had just ended, and things were heating up in Vietnam. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was preparing to test its first nuclear weapon. Sen. Joseph McCarthy was crusading against communism.

But the phrase “Red Scare” had taken on new meaning in college football. Henry R. “Red” Sanders, a soft-spoken, sharp-tongued Southerner known as a brilliant tactician, was in his sixth year as UCLA’s coach. “Red could slash you into 100 strips with his tongue alone; he was very witty and sarcastic,” recalled Sam Boghosian, 72, a guard who also played defensive tackle on the ’54 team. “He always called you by your last name and never pronounced it correctly until you were finished playing.”

The Bruins were 8-2 in 1953. They lost to Stanford, 21-20, and fell to Michigan State in the Rose Bowl, 28-20. They didn’t give it any thought at the time, but a no-repeat rule kept them out of Rose Bowl contention in 1954, preventing a national championship showdown with Ohio State.

That Buckeye team was undefeated and ranked No. 1 by Associated Press; the Bruins were top-ranked by United Press International. Ohio State played 8-3 USC in the Rose Bowl, winning handily, 20-7.

The Bruins had all their main starters back from 1953, including linemen Jack Ellena and Jim Salsbury, fullback Bob Davenport and tailback Primo Villanueva -- each of whom became first-team All-Americans.

“We just knew we were going to have a heck of a season,” said Boghosian, an academic All-American in 1954. “We talked about it before it started. Our goal was to go undefeated.”

The first victim was San Diego Navy. Sanders tried every player combination imaginable to avoid running up the score, but the 67-0 result set the stage for the rest of the season.

“It was just methodical,” said Jim Brown, 70, a second-string guard who, along with guard Hardiman Cureton and end Rommie Loudd were first-team All-Americans in 1955. “We ran the same play nine times in a row: fullback up the middle. It was our first play every game and nobody could stop it.”

The next opponent was a much tougher Kansas team, which fell, 32-7. The truest test was against Maryland, the defending national champion known for its explosive offense. The Bruins shut down the Terrapins, and Davenport scored both touchdowns in a 12-7 victory in front of 73,376 at the Coliseum.

UCLA built a 21-0 third-quarter lead in their next game, against Washington. But a series of turnovers allowed the Huskies to rally for three touchdowns, and they failed to catch the Bruins only because of a missed extra-point try. One of the turnovers came on a fumble by Sam Brown, who liked to pass the ball between hands while running back punts.

Sanders threatened to bench him if it happened again. Brown responded by returning consecutive punts for touchdowns in the next game against Stanford, passing the ball from hand to hand repeatedly. He made it three touchdowns in a row in the next game against Oregon State, a 61-0 Bruin victory.

Sanders didn’t follow through on his threat. “Everyone was treated the same,” said Brown, one of five African Americans on the primary unit. “You could beat a team 90-0, and no matter how well you played, he chewed you up.”

Sanders, coming from the South, had been labeled prejudiced by some. His response was always the same: “Yes, I’m prejudiced ... in favor of the player who can block, tackle and run fast.”

After Oregon State was California, which UCLA defeated 27-6. Then came the Oregon Ducks, who were made to look as though they really had webbed feet. Finally, one team remained that could spoil UCLA’s dream season.

A sold-out Coliseum crowd of 102,548 was on hand for the regular-season finale against a USC team led by Jon Arnett and Lindon Crow. It remained close through most of the third quarter, the Bruins holding a 7-0 lead.

But then the relentless pressure applied by the Bruin defense began taking a toll in the form of hurried passes, fumbles and interceptions, many of them deep in Trojan territory. UCLA scored 27 points in less than 15 minutes and prevailed, 34-0.

Afterward, Sanders danced around the Rose Bowl issue and refused to speculate on whether the Bruins could beat the Buckeyes.

“All I know,” he told reporters, “is that I wouldn’t trade this team for any other.”