THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum… the setting of two Olympic games (1932 and 1984 and coming again in 2028), the site of Billy Graham’s Crusade (attended by 135,000 people in 1963), the location of two Super Bowls and one World Series, the scene of innumerable rock concerts, and---most notably---for 100 years, the home field of the University of Southern California Trojan football team.

Sports writers and historians all over my home town of the City of Angels are writing of their special memories associated with this magnificent edifice. Mine goes back 65 years to the spring of 1958.

That was the year I won the USC student body election for Yell King. It was a very big deal. At my alma mater, the Yell King was the guy with the microphone in front of the 6,000-strong student rooting section. This was not a post for a gymnast. The SC student body was not made up of kids from the Midwest or the Ivy League. These kids were in Hollywood and were more into tumulting than tumbling.

Yell King was the premier "job" at the University. The guy who held the crown travelled all over the country with the football team and was acknowledged as the essence of what it was to be a big man on campus. He was not only recognized on University Avenue, but throughout Los Angeles with his stock in the after-college workplace destined to rise. The perks were parties, popularity, and girls.

That election in the spring of ‘58 was only the beginning.

I worked all summer-long preparing for the first game of the season, my “opening night.” I had a simple theory. If I could win the crowd over in this initial appearance, get them on my side this one important evening, then the rest of the season would take care of itself. If I lost them at the beginning, I “knew” I would lose them forever; I would never get them back.

I read psychological essays on crowd control. I studied the biographies of each of our ballplayers so that my appeals for support would be personal and humanized. These football players would not be our paid gladiators, but student-athletes, fighting for Trojan tradition… the same as the rest of us.

The memory of the worst football season in USC history was only months old. I got our beleaguered football coach to agree that win or lose, the entire team would come to the rooting section at game's end for the singing of the alma mater. I promised Coach Clark that the section would still be full at that conclusion, regardless of the game’s outcome, and despite what he had experienced the year before.

Bob Jani, who oversaw student special events in the days before he moved on to lead programs at Disneyland and New York’s Radio City Music Hall, helped me bring together the USC band director, and the lighting coordinator of the Coliseum. I was betting everything on my opening night.

My assistants and I appeared before our audience perhaps 20 minutes prior to game time. An opening routine received a not too bad response, and then I introduced the Southern California spell‑out. It was done slowly… enunciated letter by letter… I had never heard it performed better. I was doing fine, but the best was yet to come.

The end of the yell was a "cue." Simultaneously, with the conclusion of this signature yell, the lights in the Coliseum were doused… then, in the dark… the stirring strains of "Conquest" were struck up by our---as yet unseen---marching band.

Floodlights, situated on the stadium's rim, began to sweep along the field and the stands as if searching for the source of the inspiring martial music. At last… there they were… revealed in the eerie glow, marching slowly, row by row, down the peristyle end of this imposing edifice, the warrior­-like helmets worn by the band members, along with their brass instruments, reflected the searchlights which now were all focused on them…

…save for only one of those beacons.

This singular beam flashed across the student body section, calling attention to itself, and forcing eyes to follow its light to the opposite end of the stadium… to the Coliseum's tunnel where a man, dressed as a Trojan Warrior, appeared on a white stallion. He rode around the perimeter of the football field brandishing his sword; the lone searchlight guiding his path.

The crowd was hysterical, and I was getting credit for orchestrating it all. A lot of people had worked on this. They were all anonymous now. I was the one out there in front of everyone.

Leaving nothing to chance, I had the stoutest members of the Trojan spirit groups guarding the exits. Our team, win or lose, was going to come over to sing the alma mater at game's end; that rooting section was going to be full regardless of the outcome. I knew we were going to be all right when, in the game’s second quarter, a freshman co-ed came down front to ask my permission to go to the restroom. I granted it, but on her return, I led the 6,000 ­plus throng in the quizzical yell: "DID-YOU-WASH-YOUR-HANDS?"

Now the game: To say we won (only our second victory in a dozen outings) does not do the evening justice. That night, drawing on my experience as a former sports editor and a true aficionado of the game, I introduced a style of cheering that was particular to the situation on the field. When the heavily favored Oregon team came out of their huddle, in an obvious passing situation, our crowd was succinct and very loud.

"IN‑TER‑CEP‑SHUN”

One word, pronounced as four distinct syllables. The first time this occurred the signal caller from Oregon State looked up at the SC rooting section with a quizzical expression at our being privy to his plan to pass the ball. That Oregon State quarterback was to have a long night.

We used that yell six times during the evening. The first time we did so, there was an interception. That happy coincidence was to happen once again and nearly‑so two more times. The Oregon State Beavers wound up giving their second poorest offensive performance of that entire season on that seemingly magical night.

That was the night JoAnne Lang concluded we should be married. It was the night Pulitzer prize‑winning journalist Jim Murray decided to write for Sports Illustrated about a fresh style of cheerleading invented at USC. It was the beginning of three of the happiest months of my life.

Happy Anniversary?

I’ll cheer for that.

 

Barney Rosenzweig