The Great Red Sanders

49 years ago today, Aug. 14, 1958, the great UCLA football coach Henry “Red” Sanders died suddenly of a heart attack at the young age of 53. He remains UCLA’s great football legacy, a legacy that brought us a national championship and a tradition of winning. Rich Perelman of LAT has a great perspective on Red today on his blog, What’s Bruin. Red reminds us of what we can be and should be in football. Perelman:

When Sanders came to UCLA from Vanderbilt in 1949, he turned around a 3-7 team from 1948 into a 6-3 team in 1949, finishing second in the Pacific Coast Conference. Bruin teams under Sanders never finished lower than third in the PCC and won three titles (1953-54-55) in a row, had four second-place finishes and was third twice. His Bruins played in the 1954 and 1956 Rose Bowl games.

And, his undefeated 1954 team (9-0) won the 1954 national championship in the UPI poll while Ohio State won in the Associated Press poll. The two teams couldn’t meet in the Rose Bowl because of the PCC’s “no-repeat” rule of the time.

Perelman also reminds us that Sanders was a great character too. He gave football and Americana a couple of it’s greatest quotes: read more

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