Fifty years ago, these USC fans became Trojan road warriors

If Bob Padgett and his friends were going to die, they would go happy.

Padgett had just awakened from a nap that began when they were high above the Rockies in a single-engine propeller plane that Padgett didn’t know how to fly. Which, he admits now, was not the safest decision. But it was 1967, and USC was ranked No. 1, Notre Dame was ranked No. 5, and he and his USC fraternity brothers had to get to and from South Bend, Ind., somehow.

“We were kids, so you didn’t really look at something from the perspective of the problems,” Padgett said. “You looked at it from the perspective of opportunities.”

Their most pressing problem: When Padgett woke, the plane was no longer high above the Rockies. Rather, it was alarmingly close to the Rockies.

At least the opportunity had, indeed, been great.

USC had won.

Would they live to tell about it?

::

There are people who say that football is not a matter of life or death. Surely, these people have not experienced a fall afternoon in South Bend when the Trojans play the Fighting Irish.

Fifty years ago this week, Padgett and two of his USC Kappa Alpha fraternity brothers, Bob Best and Dan Scott, decided that a trip to see the Trojans try to break a 27-year losing streak in Notre Dame Stadium was worth risking life and limb.

An acquaintance, Frank “Dusty” Rhodes, had rented a four-seat plane bound for South Bend and asked if they wanted to go. They did not ask about his flying history or why all of his own fraternity brothers were apparently too occupied to accompany him.

They found that out later.

They chipped in $75 for expenses and took off from what is now Hollywood Burbank Airport near daybreak on Friday, the day before the game.

What developed was a college football road trip that involved very little sleep, a run in with the U.S. military and something that may have been a brush with death.

Outbound, as Rhodes looped through Arizona to avoid the mountains, he showed his new friends basic flying maneuvers, like how to pull the nose of the airplane up out of a dive. He’d planned to land at Palwaukee Airport, a small airfield now called Chicago Executive. It was dark when the Beechcraft puttered over Chicago. Rhodes was having difficulty navigating cloud cover to find the runway. With fuel getting low, he radioed for directions.

He radioed again.

And again.

“Finally,” Scott recalled, “the dispatcher calls back … ‘Beechcraft No. so-and-so — shut up! You’re interfering with commercial traffic.’”

When Rhodes spotted the lights of a landing strip, he found that it was being lashed by a crosswind. He saw another runway bisecting it, with a more favorable wind direction, but it was completely dark. Later, they learned it was under repair. There were holes capable of flipping the plane. With the fuel situation, Rhodes had no choice.

The wheels touched down, and “the place lit up like an electric light parade from Disneyland,” Scott said.

Rhodes had found an airstrip, but not the correct one. He’d landed at Naval Air Station Glenview. A host of Navy men promptly detained them.

Worse: “It was Chicago,” Padgett said. “So they were all Notre Dame fans.”

The Navy quickly determined that Rhodes had made a harmless mistake. After they grew bored of questioning the wayward USC fans, they allowed the boys to fly the five miles to Palwaukee.

By then, it was 4 a.m., and there wasn’t even time to sleep. Ahead was a 7 a.m. train to the game — and the trickiest part of their adventure.

The boys had traveled almost 2,000 miles, withstood interrogation by the Navy and made it into South Bend, where … they didn’t have any tickets. Nor could they afford to buy any.

::

Scott was a member of the yell squad, so he could join the other yell leaders on the field. Padgett, Best and Rhodes hatched a plan to join him.

They had borrowed yell leader outfits from friends back home. Now they hoped to walk down the tunnel with Scott and into the stadium.

“Who are you guys?” a security guard in the tunnel asked.

The USC yell squad, they answered.

“The ’SC yell squad is already inside!” he said.

“Well,” Padgett said, “we’re the auxiliary squad.”

Suspicious, the guard told the trio to stay where they were while he investigated. Once he left, they strolled onto the field.

The game was a USC fan’s dream. The Trojans trailed 7-0 at halftime but stormed back with 24 unanswered points in the second half to avenge a 51-0 loss from the previous season. USC’s defense intercepted seven passes. O.J. Simpson rushed 38 times for 160 yards and three touchdowns.

In the background of a photo chronicling one of Simpson’s runs, Padgett and Best can be seen, in full yell-leader regalia, running with him down the sideline.

The crew returned late to Chicago and slept for the first time in about 36 hours.

Sunday dawned gray and moody. A steady breeze rippled. Weather reports recorded almost an inch of rain at nearby O’Hare Airport. Clouds hung low, obscuring visibility. The boys went to the airstrip, surveyed the decaying weather and thought it more prudent to head not for the plane but to a bar, where they could knock back a few beers, watch football and wait out the rain.

When the rain persisted, they took a vote: Stay or leave? The weather was hazardous, and Rhodes seemed unsure about navigating a skyscraper-laden city with cloud cover.

There was a reason why all of Rhodes’ fraternity brothers had passed on the trip. He was not an instrument-rated pilot at the time, meaning he wasn’t qualified to fly in low-visibility situations.

But they had Monday classes. They decided to fly.

Rhodes kept a flashlight handy to check for ice forming as they climbed.

“It wasn’t the safest thing to do, there’s no question,” Best said.

Rhodes flew admirably, and they made it to Pueblo, Colo., to refuel. They were traveling the direct route over the Rockies to save time. It was getting late. Several hours and no small amount of beer into the trip, the boys were getting drowsy. Padgett made Best and Scott vow to stay awake in the back. That way, together, they could all stay alert.

They made a promise. Shortly after, they broke it.

And shortly after that, Rhodes, too, announced that he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. He turned control of the plane over to Padgett, who was drifting in and out of slumber.

::

Scott remembers his stomach dropping, his eyes opening and his mind registering the tops of trees, maybe 100 feet down. Rhodes was still sleeping. Padgett was pulling the nose of the plane up himself.

They’d flown over the Rockies, while mostly sleeping.

“Bob likes to say that he saved our lives,” Scott said. “We said, ‘Are you kidding me, you damn near killed us.’”

::

It is worth asking: Why did they do it?

“We were young and dumb,” Best said. “And it was a lot of fun.”

When you’re barely 20, and you’ve got a lift to see the Trojans and the Fighting Irish, you sort out the details later.

“You know,” Scott said, by way of explanation, “we were all pretty hard-core football fans.”

As the 50th anniversary approached, Padgett proposed a reunion trip. This time, they had better strings to pull to arrange it.

Padgett had become a physician and later served on USC’s board of trustees. Best founded a lucrative real-estate company and was close with some football staffers. The group has field passes for Saturday’s game. No yell-leader uniforms this time.

They also planned to say a few words for Rhodes, who died of cancer about 20 years ago. He eventually became instrument-rated. Ten years after the trip to South Bend, Best boarded a commercial flight and heard a familiar voice over the intercom: Rhodes, the plane’s pilot.

This year, without their pilot, Padgett still suggested they charter a Beechcraft.

He was overruled. Instead, they took a private jet.

zach.helfand@latimes.com

Follow Zach Helfand on Twitter @zhelfand