Big day Bruin for '75 squad
By Bob Keisser
Inside SOCAL

Anyone who was in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day 1976 may sigh knowing that three decades have passed. But they probably still get tingles thinking about the game.

The 1975 UCLA team was coached by a young Dick Vermeil and had lost a regular-season game to No. 1-ranked Ohio State. So when they earned the Rose Bowl bid and a rematch with the unbeaten Buckeyes, very few people gave the Bruins much chance of a win.

But Vermeil did, and so did an assistant coach named Terry Donahue, and a quarterback named John Sciarra, and teammates like Theotis Brown, Randy Cross, Bruce Davis, Cliff Frazier, James Owens, Jerry Robinson, Wendell Tyler, Oscar Edwards and dozens of others.

The Bruins shocked Woody Hayes' Buckeyes 23-10 to win the game, launch Vermeil's career and put a rose-colored frame on one of the greatest wins in school history. Fittingly, someone thought it would be a good time to honor that team, especially since the team dispersed quickly afterward when Vermeil took a job as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Linebackers Ray Bell and Frank Stephens began soliciting opinions on a reunion, and several phone calls led to a committee, which led to a massive effort to get every player and coach on the team to attend, as well as everyone else associated with the football program and the cheerleaders. The event will be held next Saturday.

"A group of us had been talking about it for a couple of years," Oscar Edwards, a star safety on the squad, said this week. "Frank had the advantage of working at the school so he could get in contact with alumni support. Then John, myself and others joined the committee.

"We wanted it to be unique. There's been a lot of football reunions over the years, but we wanted to expand it to try and get everyone back, including the equipment managers, team doctors, cheerleaders, everybody."

Thus far, the committee has gotten about a 60 percent confirmation rate while still looking for a few wayward former Bruins. There's already been a success story. Former lineman Brent Boyd has had knee replacement surgery and is suffering from concussion syndrome from his playing days and initially felt he wouldn't be able to travel. But the committee was able to arrange to have Boyd driven to the event.

Edwards' post-football career has been in the advertising business, including a stint as marketing director of the Wave Newspapers and his current post in targeted marketing for the L.A. Newspaper Group, which owns the Press-Telegram.

He's looking hard to find Barney Person, who replaced an injured Edwards at cornerback early in the season. " the time I got back, he led the country in interceptions," said Edwards, known as Dr. Death when he played at UCLA. "That's how I became safety. It worked out well. He had the final interception in the Rose Bowl." The reunion will be a full day. They'll meet on campus Saturday morning, tour the campus and new facilities, then have a "pregame" meal at Lawry's, which hosts the annual Rose Bowl feed bag.

The reunion will then move to a local hotel for postgame festivities.

Read more at the Press Telegram

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