Divided on the brink of greatness

News of the meeting spread in whispers to a small group of UCLA football players. Even to those who heard, it seemed mysterious.

Ramogi Huma found out about it from two teammates ““ Larry Atkins and Brendon Ayanbadejo. He was not sure what the meeting was about, but still decided to attend.

On a late November day in 1998, Huma and a group of about 20 other UCLA football players met with several members of the Black Student Union inside Ackerman Union. When the players arrived, they received an information packet on former Olympian and political activist John Carlos. Huma recognized the picture on the front of the packet, of Carlos and fellow sprinter Tommie Smith, raising their fists in protest at the 1968 Olympic games.

Then the legend walked into the room.

Carlos arrived, ready to speak to the players.

“He talked about an idea; he talked about what it means to use the fame you get through athletics to better society,” Huma, a starting linebacker, said. “He did not want us to be afraid to use our voice.”

Carlos and Smith had worn black gloves, black socks and no shoes on the medal podium in Mexico City as a show of political protest.

And at the meeting, Carlos simply told his story. He explained that he had spoken in the name of every person in the world who was denied basic human rights. He recounted the death threats he and his family received, but said it was all worth it.

“He was a pioneer,” said Atkins, one of the team’s captains and starting safety.

“It was very powerful,” Huma said. “It just showed us that there are some things that are bigger than ourselves.

“We realized that we were in a unique situation to make a statement.”

That was the moment.

The players were already conscious. Several said they chose UCLA for its political and athletic legacy. They understood the affirmative action debate that consumed Westwood that fall.

Sitting and listening to Carlos, those 20 Bruin players decided to take a stand. They spoke after the meeting and planned to wear black wristbands in their final game, a crucial matchup at Miami. The wristbands would symbolize their support of affirmative action.

“We wanted to follow the lead of people that came before us,” Ayanbadejo said.

The central point was to rally around one belief ““ everyone should have access to higher education, regardless of how disadvantaged they might be.

The meeting with Carlos made it all seem perfect. On one of the most important Saturdays of the college football season, with a national audience watching, the Bruins would raise their collective voice.

Huma explained it to other players and coaches later, days before the Miami game.

He spoke with a sense of urgency.

“Nobody cares about us in the offseason,” he said. “Nobody is going to care about us when we leave UCLA.

“We have a very small window of opportunity; most of us aren’t going to go pro, and for us to speak our minds now will be bigger than speaking our minds in any other time in our life.”

The climate

From the moment UCLA recruiters contacted him, Ayanbadejo thought about this type of opportunity.

He wasn’t alone. Most of the players had learned about the rich tradition of politically active UCLA athletes during their recruitment and their first days in Westwood.

And the players took pride in the legacies of those former Bruins: Jackie Robinson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Arthur Ashe.

“They teach you about all these people who made a difference, not just sports-wise but socially,” Ayanbadejo, the team’s defensive star, said. “That’s part of their pitch to get you to come to UCLA.”

That fall, all those stories began to carry a new and profound meaning.

The affirmative action debate was everywhere, as California courts considered the scope and meaning of Proposition 209. UC Regent Ward Connerly had spearheaded the proposition, which amended California’s constitution and barred state institutions from considering race, gender or ethnicity. It essentially ended affirmative action in public university admissions.

The proposition was voted into law Nov. 5, 1996, but the court cases ignited a new wave of protests in Westwood, Berkeley and other California campuses that fall.

In late October 1998, UCLA faculty organized a walkout to protest the UC Board of Regents’ position against affirmative action. Ayanbadejo remembered seeing students arrested after a protest at Kerckhoff Hall.

But the most shocking thing to the players was the paucity of minority students in the newest class of freshmen.

Compared to the previous year, the UCLA freshman class of 1998 had 42 percent fewer black students, 33 percent fewer Latino students and 62 percent fewer Native American students.

The numbers were just too blatant, too troubling, for the team to ignore.

After the meeting with Carlos, players spread the word about the wristbands. They discussed their plan informally, and it never came up in a team meeting.

“Everybody knew there was something going on,” said linebacker Ryan Nece, who had heard of the meeting with Carlos but did not attend. “It was underground. It wasn’t something that we publicly spoke about. It was one guy here, another guy there, a group of guys there, and that’s how words were being spread.”

Ayanbadejo, who was born in Chicago, said he tried to discuss the issue with as many teammates as he possibly could, including offensive standouts Danny Farmer, Mike Grieb and Andy Meyers. He explained that Proposition 209 would prevent people from communities like his from gaining admission to a school like UCLA.

He said players of all ethnicities understood his point, even those who were not politically active.

“Some people were more passionate about it than others, but there was a general consensus that it was a positive message that the team was willing to support,” Huma said. “Everybody was willing to participate. That is what I clearly remember.”

The Bruins were riding high. They had already beaten rival USC, Nov. 21, and they had no game Thanksgiving weekend.

All that was left for the team was a makeup game at Miami, Dec. 5. That was the day the team planned to make its statement.

“We wanted to be more than just athletes,” Ayanbadejo said.

The coaches speak

The Bruins were heroes on campus that fall. They had won their first 10 games, and with each win a powerful, unspoken confidence grew between the players. The bond transcended the locker room and provided a rare opportunity: for 64 athletes to speak in a single, emphatic voice.

But in the days leading up to the Bruins’ final game at Miami, one fear tested the team’s unity and, ultimately, silenced its planned protest.

It all started on a Wednesday, three days before the Miami game. Coach Bob Toledo pulled the team’s captains, seniors and position leaders aside after practice.

Toledo had just heard about the wristbands. He wanted an explanation.

He tried to persuade the group of players to postpone the protest. He was willing to support it in a later game, but not when there was so much at stake, Huma said.

Toledo asked them to focus on the amazing athletic opportunity they would have that weekend.

At first, the players stood their ground.

“He said to us, “˜This isn’t the platform to make social statements,'” Ayanbadejo said. “But that’s not what we were told when we came to UCLA.”

One risk caused the players to waver.

Toledo refused to be interviewed for this story, but according to two players, Toledo told the team that such a bold political protest could cost UCLA a chance at the national championship game.

That week, three teams remained undefeated in college football: No. 2 UCLA, No. 1 Tennessee and No. 3 Kansas State.

The teams were ranked by a new Bowl Championship Series system, which college football instituted that season. Players and coaches did not fully understand the complex BCS formula, but they knew it would decide which teams played in the national title game if all three teams won that weekend.

Toledo said the wristbands could be the difference. He told the players that voters in the BCS media poll could choose Kansas State and Tennessee out of disdain for the Bruins’ brash political statement.

And that’s when the players had to ask a daunting question.

Is it worth it?

No player vocalized an objection to Toledo that day after practice, Huma said, but the question lingered.

“That’s when some of the team started to divide,” Huma said. “Some guys were still adamant about doing it, and other guys wanted to wait. That was a problem.”

It was a difficult situation for the coaches, too. Because of the word-of-mouth nature of the plan, they only heard about it after it had spread throughout the locker room.

Some players were already firm in their conviction; they had thought about it too long and too hard to be dissuaded by a single consequence.

Others backed off when they realized it would jeopardize their ultimate athletic goal.

Quarterback Cade McNown said politics never defined the overall feeling of the locker room. Like Huma, he also mentioned that he felt a small window of opportunity while at UCLA.

But for McNown, academics and football and the chance to play in the NFL filled the window.

“I was pretty oblivious to it,” McNown said. “I think it’s really great that people are politically minded and trying to help the school … but it was not something I was thinking about the week before a big game.”

Former defensive assistant Bob Field, who now works in the UCLA Athletic Department, said the wristbands became a major distraction that week before the Miami game and that there were different camps that formed within the locker room.

The coaches just tried to maintain the Bruins’ bond.

“You can’t mandate how your team feels about a political issue,” Field said. “You certainly don’t try to control how guys are thinking about that issue. What you do try to do is … get them to put their difference aside when it’s time to meet or practice or play the game. Getting everybody on the same page is the goal.”

The silence

Friday night, hours before the Miami game, players were still talking about the wristbands. Some players still wanted to wear them.

Toledo found out and called a second meeting. This one was bigger; the whole team attended. It replaced the team’s routine game plan meeting, which coaches had held before every game that season.

Toledo spoke about the wristbands for an hour. A few players stood to support him.

Huma said there was no way a player could stand against his coaches and teammates, not in that atmosphere, the night before a huge game.

There, in Florida, long after the meeting with Carlos, the team abandoned its plan to wear the wristbands.

“Toledo wanted to calm things down, he didn’t want a distraction, and he wasn’t quite sure what was going on, because he didn’t know the whole information,” Nece said. “Any time your coach hears bits and pieces of things that can maybe be distracting to the ultimate focus, especially with the magnitude of the game that we were playing … he felt like it was in his best interest to try to squash it.”

There was no game plan meeting that night. The team just tried to sleep before its game at 11 a.m. the next day.

They realized there was no easy solution, no easy way to balance deep, personal politics with fundamental team values of togetherness and integrity.

“It’s so hard to explain,” Atkins said. “It wasn’t in the best interest of the team (to wear the wristbands), because there were some guys who didn’t want to do it. … And it’s always about the team, everyone from the coaches down to the equipment managers.

“But at the same time, football is a game. It’s not real life.”

The next day the Bruins took the field, clad in spotless white road uniforms and shiny gold helmets.

No one wore a wristband.

On the field at the Orange Bowl, the Bruins looked like a team divided. The offense marched with typical ease, and executed with the precision of a national championship team. The defense could not tackle or thwart any facet of the Miami attack.

McNown captained the Bruin offense to its best performance of the season. He threw for 513 yards and five touchdowns. He said it felt like a culmination.

“It was the best we could do,” he said.

Ayanbadejo sprained his knee on the very first play of the game, and played only sparingly for its duration. With or without him, the Bruin defense was helpless. On one Miami touchdown, UCLA had only 10 players on the field.

“It is very hard to go all the way and win a national title game if you can’t be at the top on both sides of the football,” McNown said. “Our defense did some great things that year as well, but, when it’s all said and done, we gave up as many yards as any team in the country.

“The reality is you need an entire team to go all the way and win that national championship.”

Up 45-42 late in the fourth quarter, UCLA wide receiver Brad Melsby fumbled, and then the game, the season and the dreams all started to slip away.

Tailback Edgerrin James punched in a 1-yard touchdown minutes later, and Miami jumped ahead. James would finish his day with 299 yards rushing. As an offense, Miami gained 699.

The Bruins got the ball after that, but McNown’s final, desperate heave fell incomplete.

UCLA’s shot at the national title game, a shot at the first football championship in Westwood since 1954, evaporated with that four-point loss.

The Bruins retreated back to their locker room quietly.

There was no longer anything to say.

No one mentioned the BCS rankings. Players and coaches could only think of what they had lost.

And in that stunned silence, there were only a few, faint words about the wristbands.

“I did hear some grumbling,” Huma said. “People saying they didn’t want to hear anything about any wristbands after we lost.

“And it never came up again.”