LORAN SMITH: Riverside Military pivotal in UCLA football history

GAINESVILLE — On Georgia’s recent and successful trip to the Rose Bowl, there was a conversation with a UCLA aficionado who noted that the Bruins’ athletics administration is determined to do something about its lack of success, comparatively speaking, in football.

UCLA has won more national championships in all sports than any other institution of higher learning with 114. The Bruins have had only one national title in football, a shared championship with Ohio State in 1954.

A conversation with my friend, Chuck White, the voice of the Rose Bowl and Pauley Pavilion, confirmed that UCLA, in hiring Chip Kelly, means that the Bruins are seeking more success in football.

An informal survey in the streets here, in the fried chicken capital of the world, even with the most elite sports fans in Hall County, likely would yield little familiarity if you brought up the names of Red Sanders and Tommy Prothro, who once were central to Riverside Military Academy football ambitions in the distant past. Both have been elected to the Riverside Hall of Fame.

Red Sanders played football at Vanderbilt and following graduation began a promising coaching career. None other than his accomplished coach, the immortal Dan McGugin, said that Sanders had one of the keenest football minds with which he was familiar.

After coaching at Clemson for three years, Sanders became the head coach at Riverside Academy in 1934. He later would experience assistant’s affiliation at Florida, LSU and his alma mater, Vandy, before taking over at UCLA in 1949 where his innovation and single wing expertise moved the Bruins to the head of the class on the West Coast.

At UCLA, he won three Pacific Coast titles and took his team to two Rose Bowls, fashioning a 6-3 record against USC. In 1954, the Pacific Coast Conference had a no repeat rule with its conference champion when it came to playing in the Rose Bowl.

As a result, Sanders’ finest team was unable to face off with Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. The Buckeyes defeated Southern Cal 20-7 and was declared co-national champion with UCLA, which lead the country in both offense and defense that season. Sanders was the first “Wizard of Westwood,” a title which was later bestowed on its legendary basketball head coach, John Wooden.

Although Vince Lombardi was credited with the line, “Winning isn’t everything, it is the only thing,” the line actually originated with Sanders. When Sanders was at Riverside, he recruited a quarterback out of Memphis to play for him in Gainesville, Tommy Prothro. They became lifetime partners in coaching.

After Riverside, Prothro played at Duke, a member of the team that played in the only Rose Bowl which took place away from Pasadena. Because of fear of Japanese attack on mainland U. S., the 1942 Rose Bowl was moved to Durham, North Carolina, where Oregon State defeated Duke 20-16.

The irony of the game is that years later, after Sanders took Prothro with him to UCLA, the latter became the head coach of the Oregon State Beavers in Corvallis. Prothro got Oregon State to play in two Rose Bowls. Later, Prothro became head coach of the Los Angeles Rams and San Diego Chargers.

I got to know Prothro when he was coaching at UCLA and coached in the old Coaches All-America game that was played in Atlanta in the 1960s. We had many interesting illuminating conversations about the single wing. He belonged to that fraternity of coaches who believed that if you couldn’t run off tackle, you should not be in the business of coaching football. He also had fond memories of his days in Gainesville and Riverside, recalling his affection for the local staple of fried chicken.

He held the view that if his old coach, Red Sanders, had enjoyed good health, rather than dying of a heart attack at age 53, that he would have been a dominant collegiate coach who would have established one of the most impressive resumes in coaching. I remember him saying, “The man was ahead of his time.”

Tommy Prothro and Red Sanders were not vagabond coaches, but it is interesting that they had a coast-to-coast identity and left their mark on a community which has long forgotten them.