Deep in the Midwestern heartland sits an awe-inspiring shrine to Americana past, a work of art so grand that the permanence of its image is assured.
The perpetual gazes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln from their perch on Mount Rushmore looking out over South Dakota serve as a reminder of the unmatchable impact that each had upon his country.
The question for us is: Who is it that comprises the Mount Rushmore of UCLA’s storied athletic past? Which four UCLA sports icons deserve the honor of being metaphorically sculptured into our minds?
The Wizard
Any discussion of the legacy of UCLA sports starts and ends with John Wooden, the Bruin basketball coach from 1948 to 1975.
The man that came to be known as “the Wizard of Westwood” led his Bruin teams to an unprecedented 10 NCAA Championships in just a 12-year span from 1963 to 1975. In the heart of that stretch, from 1967 to 1973, Wooden’s teams won seven consecutive titles and 88 straight games, a pair of marks that has never been close to being approached.
Even with all the superb statistics, much of Wooden’s legend lies in the words and teachings that have lived on through his many books and the former players who swear by the Wizard’s masterful ability to groom young men on and off the court. Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success” is still being used to this day as a model for athletic achievement, while the many axioms and philosophies he employed continue to inspire.
Captain Sky hook
A towering, lanky center from New York City named Lew Alcindor enrolled at UCLA in 1965 as one of the most sought after basketball recruits ever. A dominant offensive force, Alcindor, who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, went on to become one of the greatest players who ever lived.
At the time of Alcindor’s collegiate career, freshmen were not allowed to play varsity basketball, a rule that benefitted no one but UCLA’s opponents. Alcindor poured in 51 points in a scrimmage against varsity, leading the freshmen to an unprecedented victory. In the next three years, he helped propel the Bruins to three national championships, taking home the Most Outstanding Player of the tournament all three times and winning the Player of the Year award in 1967 and 1969.
Buoyed by his unblockable sky hook shot, Alcindor rewrote the UCLA scoring records. Despite playing for only three years, Alcindor still holds the Bruin records for, among others, career field goals made and highest career scoring average.
Oh, and he had a decent career in the professional ranks, going on to become the NBA’s all-time leading scorer.
The Pioneer
Even had Jackie Robinson not gone on to break Major League Baseball’s race barrier by signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, he would get serious consideration for UCLA’s Mount Rushmore.
Growing up in California after a family move from Georgia, Robinson spent a couple of years at Pasadena Junior College before making his way to Westwood in 1939.
At UCLA, Robinson quickly became one of the most versatile athletes the sporting world had ever seen. He became the first Bruin to letter in four sports (baseball, basketball, football and track) and was one of four black men on the football team.
Ironically, the least success Robinson had was in baseball. In his one season of varsity baseball, he had a less than mediocre batting average of .097.
Superlative athletic ability aside, Robinson is arguably the most important figure in the history of American sports, initiating dramatic change in not only the nation’s pastime, but also paving the way for equality and diversity in all sports.
The Golden Girl
Athletes in collegiate track and field often excel in their sport without a large amount of national notoriety outside of track’s closest followers. The legacies of these athletes tend to be judged based on their success on the international stage, and few have had careers that can rival that of UCLA alumna Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
Inspired by versatile pioneer of female athletics Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Joyner-Kersee starred in both track and field and basketball in a UCLA career that spanned from 1980 to 1985. It was during that stretch that she participated in her first Olympics, the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, and won the first of her medals, a silver in the heptathlon.
In the next dozen years of Olympic competition, Joyner-Kersee would go on to win two golds in the heptathlon as well as a gold and a bronze in the long jump.
With a remarkable career of success and longevity, Sports Illustrated named Joyner-Kersee the greatest female athlete of all time.
In a sports program as legendary as UCLA’s, countless individuals stand out as worthy of recognition. On this Mount Rushmore of UCLA athletics, these four Bruins transcended their sports in some major way, and an appreciation of UCLA sports begins with these four individuals.
If you’ve contributed to South Dakota tourism, e-mail Eshoff at reshoff@media.ucla.edu.