Larry Davis is, quite simply, a fan of the past.
A fan who didn’t miss a UCLA home football or basketball
game for nine years. A fan who slept out 42 days one season for
seats in Pauley Pavilion’s then 4,600-seat student section. A
fan who invented a cheer that’s still alive and well at UCLA
home games that asks the rhetorical question: “Is this a
basketball?”
And he’s got something to say about the state of student
fans today. Then again, his experience as a fan is a hard one to
live up to.
“The standard Coach (John) Wooden set ““ it’s
just almost unattainable,” Davis said. “If you’ve
never won it, you don’t know how it feels. But if
you’ve won it, that’s what you want, and what you dream
about.”
The national championships Davis is referring to were different
back in the Wooden era, when he attended UCLA.
In 1975, Davis was the first student to arrive at the Sheraton
Half-Moon Bay Inn, planning on waiting in the lobby overnight
before getting student seat No. 1 for the UCLA-Louisville Final
Four game. Only he didn’t have to sleep in the lobby because
Chancellor Charles E. Young offered Davis his extra hotel room for
the night ““ not a typical tale from those who sleep out for
today’s games.
But even without consecutive title runs, Davis sees no
explanation for the apathy of UCLA students regarding UCLA
sports.
“I’m upset, there’s no question about
it,” he said. “It’s upsetting to me to see such a
low turn-out for something they’ll take with them for the
rest of their lives.”
Davis has certainly taken his UCLA athletics experiences with
him for the rest of his life.
He rattles off his student seat of four years ““ section
13, row three, seat four ““ as easily as he would his
birthday.
He still has breakfast meetings with the guy who sat in row
four, seat four.
He met his wife of 26 years while in line for tickets to the
UCLA-USC football game. Their first son’s birth was planned
around the football and basketball seasons ““ only he was
seven weeks early, and Davis’ wife was in labor during the
rivalry game itself.
Simply put, UCLA athletics has played an enormous role in
Davis’ years here as a student and continues to do so today.
He wonders what today’s students know of Wooden’s
legacy and the bygone era of UCLA basketball.
“I think the meaning of John Wooden is lost on
today’s students,” he said, speaking on the legendary
coach’s success.
As a fan, he wanted to make a difference for the players. In
1976, Davis went to Pepperdine on the recommendation of Glen Toth,
now an associate athletic director at UCLA. He found 10 volleyball
fans holding up a ball and asking, “Is this a
volleyball?” It sounded catchy.
As part of an alumni group getting the alumni section set up at
football and basketball games, Davis felt like the cheer would be
well-received at UCLA.
“It just took off,” Davis recalled. “It
started with the hard core fans around my seat, and just grew from
there.”
During the shaky times following Wooden’s retirement,
Davis found his way to the floor in hopes of involving more of the
crowd and being loud enough to encourage the UCLA players.
“I know if they see students involved, it might help, even
by one point,” Davis said.
He takes the cheer across the country ““ wherever the
Bruins might be.
In 1995 at the NCAA finals in Seattle, while sitting
“higher than the Space Needle,” Davis used the
megaphone he smuggled in to lead the cheer before UCLA defeated
Arkansas by 11 points.
Recently, Davis is seen less and less at basketball games,
partially because he had a slight falling-out with the athletic
department, but mostly because he spends his weekends coaching his
sons’ basketball teams.
But UCLA basketball will always be a part of Larry Davis.
“UCLA is a part and parcel of who I am,” he said.
“I wake up in the morning, it’s just part of me and
part of everything I do.
“I’m not the biggest fan, but I believe that if
you’re a Bruin … then be a Bruin.”