The darkest day in UCLA football history started with a coaches’ luncheon on campus. While Ohio State’s Woody Hayes, Oklahoma’s Bud Wilkinson and other top college coaches assembled in Chicago for a yearly all-star game, Henry Russell “Red” Sanders stayed behind in Westwood.
Sanders reasoned that his Bruins, still grappling with multiple-year sanctions for making payments to players that exceeded the allowable amount, needed his attention a little more than a month before the 1958 season opener.
People who had watched UCLA solidify its standing as the preeminent program in Southern California despite those sanctions thought the coach was needlessly worried.