In this episode of Bruin to Bruin, host Aidan Teeger sits down with Andy Hill – UCLA basketball champion-turned-Hollywood executive – to reflect on his time playing for Coach John Wooden during the peak of the Bruins’ legendary dynasty. Hill shares vivid memories from Pauley Pavilion, insights into Wooden’s understated leadership and lessons he carried into a successful media career. From orange peels to handwritten notes, this conversation is a heartfelt tribute to the enduring legacy of UCLA, the meaning of humility and the lifelong impact of mentorship.

Aidan Teeger: Andy Hill, welcome to Bruin to Bruin.

Andy Hill: Good to be here, I am a Bruin, you’re a Bruin, Bruin to Bruin.

AT: Bruin to Bruin. There you go. You figured it out.

AH: I did.

AT: So you started your collegiate basketball career off the back of one of the greatest dynasties in history. When you think back to your time at UCLA, what is the first memory that comes to mind from when you originally started?

AH: Just the hope of being a part of a tremendous dynasty, a dynasty that seemed to represent everything that was good in sports. A very clean-cut group of guys playing very appealing basketball: fast-break basketball, lots of scoring. I loved the music. I loved the cheerleaders. I grew up in Westwood, so it was the beginning of a dream. It didn’t quite turn out the way I dreamt it, but it was the beginning of a dream.

AT: How did you dream it?

AH: Well, I dreamt that I was, and by the way, I didn’t think I was going to be a big professional basketball player. Young people today don’t really understand that in those days, professional basketball players actually had to work in the summertime. They didn’t make that much money, so it wasn’t like, “Oh my God, I want to play pro – I’ll become independently wealthy.” And I thought, you know, I’m a little white dude. What are the chances I’m going to make the NBA? So what it was really about for me was being part of UCLA basketball. It was just so cool. Pauley Pavilion was sold out every night, and it was just the trip of a lifetime to be a part of the greatest dynasty ever.

It’s still a part of our fabric here at UCLA. We’re still thought of as a basketball school. Coach Wooden’s last title was in ’75. If my math is any good, about 50 years ago. But it made such an impression on people because it was so improbable. He did it with different players. He did it in different eras. They took the dunk away from Kareem. He did it without Kareem and Bill. He did it with the smallest teams ever. So it was really something that, in hindsight, I am unbelievably stunned I got to be a part of.

AT: And before all of that, before the genesis of this aspiration to join the Bruins as a collegiate basketball player, you were into baseball for a little bit, is that right? That was one of your passions?

AH: Well, yeah. I loved baseball, but at the time I was just entering puberty. Basketball had a lot more action. Baseball, you stood around a lot, and in 1963, when I was 13, UCLA went on a run to their first national championship. So at the point in time when I was trying to decide, “What do you really love?” Here was this Bruin team. No one bigger than 6-foot-5, so you kind of figured anybody could play for these guys. Yeah, I fell and fell hard. At that point, baseball fell by the wayside, and all I wanted to do was play basketball. But that was way before I had any dreams of playing at UCLA. I went to University High School right near here, and that was my dream. I wanted to play in high school. Seemed like a big idea to a kid.

AT: Were there any other colleges that were on the table before you committed to UCLA?

AH: Well, this is, once again, ancient history. I graduated mid-semester, and so, I had a lot of schools writing to me. But when John Wooden said, “We’d like you to come to UCLA,” you know, when your dream school comes calling … I’m still kind of amazed that they did. But I was an easy sell.

AT: So Wooden approached you, is that right?

AH: Well, they always approach you. The assistant coaches really did most of the recruiting. Coach Wooden was not what you would … Yeah, I came up and had dinner with him a couple of times at the Training Table. The first time I came up here, I had dinner sitting between Coach Wooden and, at the time, Lew Alcindor – he became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I’m, by nature, not the world’s fastest eater, and Coach Wooden had what I assume is this Midwestern Indiana habit where he would sit down and cut up the whole steak before he put it … You know, I was taught you take a piece, then put down your knife and fork and take a little bit. He cut the whole doggone thing up. So within like, three minutes, he’d finished, and we were supposed to be talking, and I’m sitting between him and Kareem. It was pretty awkward.

But, you know, he was interesting because he undersold. Other coaches all oversold. His whole approach was, “Here’s what I’m offering. I’m offering a world-class education.” By the way, that’s what he talked about first. I don’t … do they still go to school, these guys? I have no idea. I guess they do.

AT: On paper, right.

AH: He talked about a world-class education and then an opportunity to compete for playing time. Not a guaranteed starting time. Not, “I’m gonna let you shoot.” No, an opportunity to compete for playing time. And that appealed to a certain kind of person, I guess, that had a little bit of “show me” in them. Like, “OK, I’ll come, I’ll show you.” And so I came, but I didn’t show him.

AT: But he never emphasized performance metrics, did he? Like victories, points scored?

AH: No.

AT: That was never his thing, was it?

AH: Never, never, never, never, never. And, and, and I think his … the fact that he never talked about winning, which people find hard to believe. When I was there, we went 87 and 3. How did he never talk about winning? He only recruited players from teams that were very successful. None of the guys who he recruited were like, big scorers on teams that didn’t do well. They were all part of a team. So if you have people who really wanna win, do you need to keep talking about it? Because the truth of it is they probably wanna win too much. I mean, my old buddy Bill Walton was just a ferocious competitor. He couldn’t let it go his whole life. He couldn’t let losses go.

And, you know, I thought Coach was right, but, you know, Bill would argue to the day he died, “No, no, no, you gotta win. It’s no good if you don’t win.” And Coach Wooden just had this idea that ultimately in life, you know, first of all it’s just basketball. It’s just a game. I mean, it’s not life and death. You kind of make it out to be, but it isn’t. It’s a game. It’s an entertainment, and hopefully there are a lot of other things that come out of it. And, you know, hopefully we get a chance to talk about that a little bit because obviously, my experience at UCLA so deeply impacted my life and business. Seemingly had nothing to do with anything I’d done at UCLA, that, you know, really made this experience a gamechanger for me.

AT: Well, talking about the lessons that you learned in college transitioning over into your personal and professional career, I know that you wrote a book, “Be Quick – but Don’t Hurry (Finding Success in the Teachings of a Lifetime).” John Wooden wrote the foreword to that book, didn’t he?

AH: Yes.

AT: The foreword, and I’m gonna quote: “This book, written by one former student, gives me special pleasure because the author not only studied hard but took the concepts and elements of my teachings and added his own experiences to envision the lessons in ways that go beyond the original teachings. There is nothing more satisfying for a teacher than watching his students make his lessons their own.” What does it mean to you that he said that?

AH: Everything. I mean, we all admired Coach deeply. I think that it also gives you a sense of why he was someone you’d admire, that he was quite genuine in expressing, “Wow, you took my stuff and made it better.” You know, that’s pretty generous for someone who’s generally considered the greatest coach of all time. When I let him read the book for the first time, he sent me a beautiful handwritten thank you note. I think I might have mentioned it to you folks in class the other day. What an interesting thing to do.

If you want to be one of one out of a pile of people who are applying, send a thank you note with a stamp on it. Not an internet electronic digital note, but a pen and ink note. Quick, say thank you.

Well, Coach, when he got my book and read it. Because he was such an intellectual, he sent me a poem from Robert Burns, I believe: “Ah, but the gift the Giver give us to see ourselves as others see us would from many a blunder free us.” Fascinating, right? A basketball coach sending you a philosopher’s quote, reading your book. And it really also is an indication of his view of his own role, which was that he was a teacher. Nothing is more satisfying to a teacher than to see that student take those pieces of the puzzle that you gave him and rearrange them and make a picture you’d never imagined. And I think that’s what gave Coach the most pleasure.

He was proud of the guys who went and played in the NBA. He was every bit as proud of the guys who became teachers and doctors and attorneys. If they did a job well, he was very proud of them. People find it hard to believe. How could John Wooden be so humble? I mean, he won all these championships, and people just virtually worshiped him. How could he be so humble? Because he didn’t think he was better than anybody else. If somebody did a great job sweeping up after the game, but they did a great job, that he’d just won a national championship was no more important than someone who came in and did a good job cleaning up the locker room.

It was really the way he viewed everyone, and I think it allowed him in many cases to reach out to people who he might not have been necessarily able to reach because they really understood this was a very simple, kind, humble man at his core, who at the same time was tough as nails but never swore, which obviously is a little bit different than some of our coaches today.

AT: There was a commonly termed substitute he used where, when he used that term, you’d know he was angry.

AH: Yes.

AT: What was it?

AH: It was a “goodness gracious sakes alive.”

AT: That was it.

AH: And we had no question we were being cussed out. But of course, once again, when you think about it, when you cuss somebody out using swear words, there’s no instruction in them. You do need to make people aware you’re not happy. “This will not work. You will not continue to play if you keep making this mistake. You need to understand I’m very upset.”

But adding the magic words that so many coaches use today doesn’t do anything more than make that coach vulnerable to being cited for a hostile work environment and fired by the HR department because there is no environment in America where the language contemporary coaches use is tolerated – nowhere, except in the sports world. And if, in fact, the sports world, as it claims, is building leaders of tomorrow, then why do they let their leaders cuss them out? Because it will get every young guy and woman who goes into a leadership position fired immediately if they speak to them like these coaches dressed down their players.

AT: What do you think is missing? What piece of the puzzle is missing there? What are coaches today not understanding about their roles that John Wooden did understand?

AH: Well, first of all, I don’t want to criticize today’s coaches. The world is so different and changing so fast. I mean, they have to go out and raise NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) money. They become fundraisers. And then another piece of it that nobody really thinks about is that once they’ve raised this NIL money, they have to become literally the general manager. “How much does Aidan get? How much does Mia get? How much does Max get?” You know, but no, he’s got to decide. He’s got to say, “This is how much you’re worth,” because he’s got X amount of NIL money. Well, boy, that’s a pretty easy way to piss somebody off. “How come you gave him more money than you gave me?” I mean, it sets up so many problems.

And of course, no one used to transfer. I can’t remember anyone really transferring out of UCLA. At the end of the year, Mick Cronin’s gonna have to re-recruit every guy who’s already on his team. They never spent a second doing that. So it’s a very, very difficult environment. There are cameras everywhere. There’s 24/7 cable sports talk. None of that stuff used to exist. So I hesitate to really criticize these people.

But what I would say is, in the last couple of years, Jay Wright quit, Tony Bennett quit, and Jim Larrañaga quit. Those are three of the finest coaches in America. When three of your finest coaches quit, that’s a canary in the coal mine. Something is very, very wrong. And what’s really wrong is that the system has completely stopped focusing on the young student athlete, and it has become professional sports, and I think that’s sad.

AT: It seems like one of the sort of consequences to be wary of with outrageous success is it becomes a production. And once it becomes a production, substance tends to fall out of the list of priorities. So how do you suggest … how do you suggest we remedy that? If you want to start bottom up. UCLA, you know, a message to Mick Cronin, perhaps.

AH: I think these folks are more focused on it than I could ever be. I think they realize it’s really not in their control. I think they’re doing as good a job as they can do under the circumstances. I think Mick got caught a year behind raising that NIL money, and he made up for it this year. But I can promise you – Mick’s a friend of mine – Mick didn’t get into coaching to become a fundraiser. None of these people did.

Now, keep in mind, they’re also making a ton of dough. John Wooden never made more than $32,500 a year. These guys are all making multiple millions of dollars. So they are being paid for it – for the aggravation. But at the same time, I do really feel we sort of lost something that was uniquely American, where college sports … there were places you could go where there truly were student athletes competing against other student athletes because they loved to play a game.

You know, the idea that these guys in football play all year with their teammates and get to a bowl game and then say, I’m not going to play. I can’t imagine that. I don’t want to go out with the fellas one more time? You gotta be kidding me. That was the greatest thing in the world. But it has become so professional. “Oh, I don’t want to hurt myself, the draft is coming up.” And so I, more than anything, feel bad for the athletes because I think they’ve lost that opportunity to do something just because they love it. That’s why we did it. I just loved it.

AT: I want to jump very quickly to your transition from athlete to media executive. Was that planned?

AH: No.

AT: How did that happen?

AH: None of my life was planned. Plans are lovely. They never work out. You just gotta keep knocking on doors and see which ones open up. I sort of slipped in the side door of the media business in the sense that I had a brother who was in the business who was a total opposite. I not only didn’t have an interest, I thought I wouldn’t be interested if he was, but he kept telling me, “Andy, I think you’ll do great in this business. You should do this.”

I was working actually for a couple of UCLA professors running a research organization for them, and my brother had a movie at ABC about Rocky Marciano, a boxer, and he needed two months worth of research done in two weeks. So he called me – that was my brother, nice guy that he was. And I loved it. I loved being in the stacks. I’m a pre-internet guy. I loved going and exploring Powell Library and finding things that I couldn’t find anywhere else. I really got into it. I loved it.

And so after I’d finished doing that, I did something really stupid. I decided that I would like to be in that business, not knowing that actually, this isn’t really something you do. Everybody says, “What do I do?” Well, I did something nobody would do because it’s stupid. I wrote up three different treatments for movies of the week. Who was I? I’m a writer? I was some guy on the street and then started calling producers to go and pitch them, which I can tell you right now is stupid. Nobody’s going to call you back. You don’t know. You never … well, of course you don’t know who will call you back. And somebody called me back and read them and actually offered me a job.

From there I was fortunate enough to get a bunch of other opportunities. The thing to know is every time you get a new opportunity, the first day at work, if you’re not scared to death, you didn’t take a big enough job. But, you know, things worked out. I got very lucky. I had a wonderful career in Hollywood. Ran into a really unpleasant fellow by the name of Leslie Moonves, who got fired by CBS – but long after he fired me. And what seemed like the worst thing that ever happened to me – being fired – turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I don’t know that I ever would’ve called John Wooden if Les hadn’t fired me.

So one thing I would say to keep in mind for Bruins everywhere is, it may seem like the worst thing that ever happened … What are you going to do with it? Which is one of the reasons I think Coach was so insistent on people not reacting too much to wins or losses because what he knew, and I think this is true in anything, is that when you lose, there’s a reason you lost, and it isn’t the referees. That’s ridiculous. There’s a reason you lost. Find out what it is. Fix it. But when you’re all upset and you’re screaming about the other coach and this guy got away with that and the crowd was doing … Well, you’re never going to get better.

He understood the value in keeping an even head about winning and losing. Now, we went 87-3, so we didn’t lose much. But that was certainly the way he was when we lost. I think when we lost … first of all, we never lost a game that mattered. That’s important to know. The games we lost didn’t matter. And he actually seemed kind of happy to me when we lost because he realized that now in practice, instead of coaching an undefeated team, he was coaching a team that had just lost, and they were probably going to listen a little better. You know, when you’re undefeated, you tend to stop listening.

AT: Did his manner ever change? It probably changed from your perspective after you’d lost a game. Did his manner of coaching, teaching ever change after a big victory or after a big loss? Was it always as consistent?

AH: No. Totally consistent. Yeah. I’ll tell you a great story because it really is very much Coach. First national championship team I was a part of, we had beaten Jacksonville. They had a big guy, Artis Gilmore – he’s in the Hall of Fame – seven foot two, in Cole Field House in Maryland. The alumni are going wild, and you could hear them outside the locker room. They’re yelling and screaming, and I’m getting ready to leave the locker room, and there are only a couple of people left in the locker room.

I look over in the corner of the locker room, and there was Coach, who was bending down to pick up an orange peel to throw it in the trash. And I think you’ve realized this, Aidan – we’ve spent time together – I’m kind of a wise guy. I went over and said, “Hey Coach, you know, there are a thousand alumni out there waiting to pat you on the back, and you’re throwing orange peels in the trash can?”

And he looked at me and said, “Andy, I take great pride in getting letters from janitors saying we had the cleanest locker room in America.” And he wasn’t kidding. I mean, you can kind of think that – you gotta be kidding me – but that was him. He thought that was respectful. And by the way, respectful to people he would never see. There are plenty of people who would say in that same situation, “Well, they get paid to clean up the locker room. Why shouldn’t we leave it a mess?” But that wasn’t Coach.

AT: It reminds me of … I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the TV series Ted Lasso?

AH: Oh, of course. Yeah. Well they’ve got the Pyramid of Success on the wall.

AT: They’ve got the Pyramid of Success up there, and they probably studied a little bit of some of these stories in some regard because they really emphasize in that show the camaraderie between the groundskeepers and the players and the coaches. They always leave the locker rooms in great condition. Everything’s clean. So I was just kind of putting that together in my head. OK, they must have really looked into this.

AH: I think you would actually be stunned knowing how many coaches are deeply impacted by John Wooden. And for this to be a Bruin to Bruin podcast, the one thing I’d love everybody at UCLA to understand is: He’s part of your legacy. He’s part of your degree. And you heard his reaction to my book, right? The reaction to the book: “I’m so glad somebody took what I taught them and did better. Wow, that’s great.” No one would love knowing – and I know he is gone – but I kind of feel like he still knows, that people were taking these very simple lessons that he utilized, invented – call it what you want – but didn’t just create them, set them down on paper, wrote book after book after book, gave lecture after lecture after lecture, trying to tell people, “This is how I did it.” No secrets. He wasn’t hiding a rabbit anywhere. “This is how I did it. This is how I was successful in getting a group of people,” and by the way, keep in mind high school All-Americans, big egos wanna score themselves, right? You need talent in an organization, but the truth of it is really talented people wanna do it themselves. How do you get a group of really talented young men with big egos to work together toward a common goal and achieve it year after year after year?

Well, what I would say is everyone should have a leadership philosophy. Every Bruin’s leadership philosophy should be John Wooden. Now, maybe you can find a better one. I’d be happy to look at it. I’ve never seen a better one. And he’s us. When I tell people in classes that I’ve spoken to, go ahead, say you majored in anthropology, but you got a minor in John Wooden. There’s not a job interview that won’t stop, and somebody will say, “What do you mean by that? What does that mean?” At which point you can define who you are through someone who’s very famous. “This is how I believe in carrying myself: with dignity and humility, acting with integrity, making sure that everyone is accountable, and playing really, really hard.” Because John Wooden was no softy. He was one tough guy. But that’s what I believe.

And I think that really is, at the end of the day, part of what’s attractive about UCLA. It’s funny. I don’t think that many people come to UCLA thinking, “I hope I’m gonna get rich.” I think most people come to UCLA because they want to do something in the world, and if they can make some money in the process, that’s terrific. I got paid to do TV shows, but I wanted to do TV shows that I thought people could watch with their family that had values in them. And, by the way, having values isn’t free. There are plenty of people in Hollywood that tell you, “Oh boy, Andy, he did shows like ‘Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman’ and ‘Touched by an Angel’ and all these hokey…” Yeah, OK, they were hokey. Millions and millions of people watched them and will watch them till the end of time, and that makes me happy. I was able to watch them with my kids. Did everybody like them? No. But I guess I kind of learned that from Coach. He wasn’t for everybody. There were people who didn’t like him too, and they always had the stupidest reason, which was, “He thinks he’s better than us,” which was ridiculous. He never did.

AT: Did he ever expand on where the cornerstones of his philosophy came from?

AH: Well, OK. I’m gonna give you a little gem here on your podcast.

AT: Please.

AT: He gave me a book. So, a little bit of a story, but I’m gonna tell you the title of the book first. It’s called “The Majesty of Calmness,” C-A-L-M-N-E-S-S, by William George Jordan. It’s $5. It was written in 1890, and he gave me a copy of it about a year before he died with a message: “Read it and then read it again,” which nobody had ever said to me after giving me a book. But it’s a little tiny book. It’s 40 pages long. So that’s … I can do that.

And I’m gonna admit something here, Aidan, that I probably shouldn’t admit, which is I went through UCLA and never had an underliner. I never studied. I read every book, I went to every class, but I was able to just get by not underlining. But I started to read this book and I said, I need a yellow underliner. And I started underlining it, and I couldn’t stop.

Now keep in mind, though this book was written in 1890, it was written as a pamphlet. It’s the kind of thing … in public domain, this kind of thing doesn’t exist anymore. And I’m frustrated because what I’d love to ask Coach – and I never did – was, “Did your dad read you this book when you were growing up in Indiana?” Because it is the schematic for his philosophy.

So if you want to really get an origin story of where did you … now, obviously he got a lot from his dad, he got a lot from his coaches, but if you go back and read William George Jordan, which really defines the depth of Coach’s philosophy, it’s all in “The Majesty of Calmness,” which I’ve given away probably a thousand times now. And no one – I don’t know why he gave it to me – no one else has seen it. Kareem hadn’t seen it. Bill hadn’t seen it. Mike Warren, Lucius (Allen), they hadn’t. He gave it to me. Maybe he knew I’d buy a lot of them. I don’t know.

AT: Did you ask for it?

AH: No, he just, one day he said, I think that you’ll really enjoy this book. And then, by the way, what was a real killer was I lost it.

AT: Awesome.

AH: Killer. I lost it. And then four years later, I was in St. Louis. I did a newsletter for Edward Jones, big brokerage house. We were back in St. Louis. I finished my book and went to the airport early, and I said, I’ll get another book. And I forgot. I got on the plane and started scrambling around in my bag, and under that cardboard thing, there it was: “The Majesty of Calmness.”

And I read it again, and I’ve read it many, many times. It just strikes me so much how much it is like him. I’ve got a picture in my family room that I see when I watch TV where I’m standing there with Coach and Bill Walton, and they’re both gone. And I realize: Wow, what a lucky guy I was. These were my dudes. These were my guys. And why? Because I went to UCLA.

AT: It’s a pretty impressive crew. I mean, when you kind of drop these names, I mean, John Wooden, he is, to someone like me, who I wouldn’t even consider myself, you know, up until the last year, even a mainstream collegiate basketball fan.

AH: Mm-hmm.

AT: Or follower, and I’d heard of John Wooden.

AH: Right.

AT: I mean, his sort of impact and legacy reverberates along so many different domains. And the same goes for Bill and Kareem. So it’s pretty incredible just kind of hearing these stories.

AH: Well, and this is the interesting thing, Aidan, that I hope all of the people in Bruin land understand. You meet these former Bruin athletes … in person, they’re just as cool as you would hope they would be. I found many times in life because I worked in the entertainment business, you had an expectation of who someone was gonna be, but they weren’t really that. These guys are the real deal. They’re the coolest guys you could ever meet in a million years. And I just think I’m a lucky guy to be part of that fraternity. It’s a very cool fraternity.

AT: You think “Don’t meet your heroes” doesn’t apply to that group?

AH: No! And I think that, like every general rule, it’s generally true. Part of what makes it so unique. I mean, once again, like I say, if you were to try and create a branding vehicle for a university that combines athletic greatness with academic greatness, and you wanted to come up with a bunch of figures that represented the greatest athletes who accomplished at a very high level but also accomplished out in the world … well, John Wooden, Bill Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Rafer Johnson, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Ann Meyers Drysdale. These are the greatest figures in the history of college sports, and they all went to UCLA.

I mean, there are other schools. It was funny when Mick Cronin first came here, Bill Walton and I put together a list of all the people who had gone into broadcast media, and it was stunning. There were like 70 names on the list. You tend not to think about some of the people you see on TV. A fellow like you from Bakersfield may not know that Reggie Miller went to UCLA and Sean Farnham went to UCLA. All of these guys that you see on TV, they all went to UCLA. And even Mick said to me, “I mean, we had one guy at Cincinnati, a guy named Lewis Johnson, who was a track broadcaster.” There were like 70.

I mean, you know, Troy Aikman went to UCLA. Big broadcast careers. They’re absolutely everywhere. And yet we don’t really promote that within the UCLA community. But I think it’s something to pay attention to. It’s not purely coincidence that so many people come out of this institution able to express themselves and entertain and communicate in an effective manner. Because if you ever actually look at how many Bruins are in the media business, it’s mind-boggling.

AT: The alumni network here is staggering.

AH: Mm-hmm.

AT: I’ve sort of … I mean, you mentioned some names there. Troy Aikman—he was actually gonna come on this podcast, but things got a little busy. But—

AH: But eventually, if you stay after him … people feel very connected to having been a Bruin. I think it does become a very, very big part of your identity, clearly for me. I mean, I’m … well, I guess there are 12 of us now, 12 guys who won three national championships, and we all played for Coach Wooden. Twelve guys in the world. That’s a pretty cool fraternity. Wow. Crazy. Number one public university in America. Wow. Crazy.

And I just think it’s something … yeah, maybe we don’t have the greatest football team in the world. We have a lot of constraints. Our football stadium’s 25 miles away. We don’t have alumni that give like crazy. But at the end of the day, this university is defined by a lot more than its football team.

And listen, in five years when Saudi Arabia owns the SEC (Southeastern Conference), college sports isn’t gonna mean anything anyhow. This is … well, this is Thelma & Louise heading for the cliff, what they’re doing now.

AT: Yeah, I’m gonna have to do some more research on the backend of collegiate sports, but it’s super interesting. I mean, to be able to kind of view the timeline of where it was in Wooden’s day and where it’s heading now.

AH: Well, by the way, I don’t know if you noticed the other day. Ohio State, $35 million in the hole this year. These losses in public institutions are unsustainable. And I think our athletic department’s $150 million in the hole. These are unsustainable losses.

And by the way, there were years where truly athletics and education did kind of have a somewhat uneasy partnership. Is there really any partnership left at all? Can you imagine – these guys you see on TV every weekend, they’ve been in the portal. This is now their third school. What does their transcript look like? Can you imagine what the admissions office says? These guys are going from this school to that school to this school. It could take them 17 years to graduate, but no one cares. These kids spending all this time on airplanes. Airplanes are bad for you. Time zones, bad for you. Back and forth and back and forth. But they don’t care because it’s money. We’re gonna make more money.

And I really do think that we have lost a lot of the educational component, and it said, it saddens me.

AT: Well, I’m gonna bring it home. Student-athletes today at UCLA sort of … almost notoriously struggle with the balance between academics and athletics, and there’s huge pressure on both sides. I know Wooden emphasized athletics as being secondary: You are here to learn, you’re here to get an education.

AH: Right.

AT: You’re here to get your degree. What – and you’ve already acknowledged that things are a little different now – what sort of advice can you give to students who may be struggling with that balancing act at UCLA?

AH: Boy, that’s a …

AT: Loaded question.

AH: A great question that I’m not sure I really have an answer to. My heart goes out to so many of the student-athletes. This is not just football players. This is women competing in every sport as well, who are now expected to do film study and be in the weight room and … you know, we didn’t have a weight room! I never looked at film. All those hours in the day when … I feel like a lot of my college education, I read voraciously. Not necessarily the textbooks, but I was always reading.

Now they’re on airplanes, now they’re having to go to the weight room, now they’re having to go to the film study room. It really has become a professional situation. So, I guess part of what I would say for a lot of young people is: If you love playing sports and want to go to school, maybe you should look at a school that isn’t a Power Five school, where the reality is that winning is so important for the bottom line that everybody’s pushing too hard. That’s what it feels like – everybody’s pushing too hard – that these kids don’t really get to go to college like I did.

We got to go to college. We got to protest the war, we got to go on strike, we got to do a lot of crazy things. I never looked at film, never took these long plane flights. Part of the reason we rarely flew is because every game at Pauley Pavilion was sold out. J.D. Morgan said, “Why should we leave? We’re making a fortune – let’s just stay here and play.” So we just didn’t travel that much. Some of the travel is fun, but I think on the whole, it’s very, very hard on these young athletes.

So, if you think your future is as a professional, this is what you gotta put yourself through because everybody is. But if, at the end of the day, you see your college career ending after college, that you’re gonna go and be a professional in something else, which of course is true for, what, 97% of the student-athletes, you’ve gotta enforce some things for yourself. Maybe I won’t play, maybe I won’t play as much as I’d like to play. It’s not the end of the world if it means that I’m gonna flunk a test next week. Coach Wooden’s absolute excuse: “I have to study.” Now, I mean, there were certain guys who, if they said they had to study, you were kind of suspicious, but that was a get-out-of-practice-free.

The other thing I would tell you, though, was nobody wanted to miss practice. Basketball’s a load of fun if nobody’s cussing you out. I got to play against the best players in the game every day. It was a thrill. We loved it. It was hard and competitive, but we loved it. The guy who played against me every day, Henry Bibby, we were freshman co–most valuable players. Henry and I are like brothers today. We’re still best friends.

If I was in school today, I’d probably be in the transfer portal. Oh God, I’m glad I’m not around today because the temptation would be so great to leave. And I just had the experience of a lifetime here, which, of course, if you had told me after my last game, “This is the greatest thing you ever did,” I might have punched you in the nose because it didn’t feel that way. But you know what? A lot of stuff that doesn’t feel good in life ends up being great stuff. Playing for John Wooden didn’t feel so good at the time. But over time, nothing could be better.

AT: “Try to have fun” is probably a good way to end that off. You know, it’s all a little bit stressful, but …

AH: Absolutely

AT: Enjoy it.

AH: Have some gratitude. You’re lucky to be at UCLA. And get out and meet people. Don’t sit there staring at your phone. Put your thumbs in your pocket, look people in the eye, and make relationships that you’ll carry forward into life, and your life will turn out so much better for it. Get your face out of the screen. Is that … really awful last words to leave on a podcast? Oh my God.

AT: I think it’s very apt, considering most people will be listening to this on their phones. Well, Andy, thank you so much for coming on. I’ve really enjoyed this discussion.

AH: Pleasure, Aidan. Enjoyed it.

AT: And I hope to see you at Pauley soon.

AH: I’ll be there this coming Tuesday. You better show up.

AT: I will be there.

AH: I’m right behind the bench, 10 rows up. Come say hi.

AT: 6 p.m. All right, sounds good.

AH: Pauley will be packed.

AT: Hope so.

AH: Go Bruins!

AT: Go Bruins!

AH: All right, buddy. Thank you.