The details come back slowly for Larry Atkins. Ten years later, it is hard to remember every moment, every discussion.
Today, the wristbands that the 1998 UCLA football team planned to wear in its final game sit in an old box, tucked into obscurity in Atkins’ Los Angeles home. Now they are only relics.
The loss is still fresh in his mind.
Bruin players planned to wear those wristbands to protest Proposition 209 prior to the final game of their season at Miami but canceled the plan at the last minute. UCLA went on to lose the game, their undefeated season, and a chance at a national championship.
“The loss to Miami always sticks out,” quarterback Cade McNown said. “As much or more than any of the wins.”
The team never really recovered.
A month later the Bruins played Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl. They were 10-point favorites entering that game but fell again. Just like Miami, Wisconsin managed to run all over the UCLA defense even as the Bruin offense delivered a brilliant performance.
No UCLA team has made it back to the Rose Bowl in the past nine seasons, much less captured a victory on that prominent stage.
“I can’t say I’ve ever moved past those two losses,” linebacker Ramogi Huma said. “We had a great run ““ one of the best runs in recent memory ““ and we had a lot of wins, 20 in a row. But those two losses are kind of the thing that I remember when I think back.”
The Wisconsin loss was the final game for many of the UCLA players who drove the incredible success of the 1997 and 1998 seasons.
Six Bruins were selected in the 1999 NFL Draft ““ McNown, Atkins, Kris Farris, Shaun Rogers, Chad Overhauser, and Skip Hicks.
Without that nucleus, the following year’s team stumbled badly. The Bruins lost to rival USC for the first time in nine seasons, fell in four of their last five games, and finished the season at 4-7.
And there was no resolution to the wristband saga, either.
Linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo ““ one of the team’s stars in 1998 ““ still believes he was not selected in the NFL Draft because of his vocal support of the wristbands. He said coach Bob Toledo never gave him the “stamp of approval” that he needed to impress NFL scouts.
Ayanbadejo eventually worked his way into the NFL, though, and he is one of the only players from that team still in the league.
Toledo refused to be interviewed for this series of stories.
The only real consensus today is that the wristband situation could have been handled better on all sides, that there was a real communication breakdown within the UCLA locker room.
“If that team could go back and do it all over again today, I’m sure it would have been handled differently,” said former defensive assistant Bob Field, who now works in the UCLA athletic department. “But that’s the way life is; hindsight is always 20-20.
“Looking back, it’s always a lot clearer.”
A new era
The collapse in Miami was only the start.
UCLA football teams have not come close to that level of prestige or dominance in the past nine seasons, and this year’s team looks to be headed toward a similar, mediocre finish.
“It’s amazing how long it’s been since UCLA was ranked as high as it was,” former wideout Danny Farmer said.
Over that span the football program has faced problems on and off the field. Toledo was fired in 2002, and his successor, Karl Dorrell, lasted only four seasons.
So the 1998 team is still the model. UCLA is still searching, still trying to climb back to that level.
Field may know better than anyone; this is his 30th year at UCLA working with the football team. He served as an assistant coach for 22 years, before moving to the administration side of the athletic department in 2002.
“I really think that we have the pieces in place,” he said. “I really think we’ll be sitting a couple of years from now, talking about being back, talking about having another chance to play for a national championship.”
Every player on the 1998 team interviewed for this series said there is a feeling of confidence surrounding the new coaching staff, a feeling that the Bruins may indeed return to the elite echelon of college football.
Rick Neuheisel, the team’s current coach and a former UCLA quarterback, knows about that type of greatness.
“UCLA football has five Rose Bowl championship teams, I was a player on two of them, and now I want to coach one “ said Neuheisel, who was not a part of the 1998 team. “There will be no stone left unturned in getting us back to the Rose Bowl.
“That’s where we belong.”