That Championship Season : In 1971, Cal Lutheran Outraced Tensions to NAIA Title

Every fall at Cal Lutheran College, a new group of football players sits down in a stark, windowless room near the athletic office to watch a film of Kingsmen football highlights. The 16 seasons of two or fewer losses and the three playoff appearances are prominently featured in the film, titled “The Road To Glory.”

But its climax is the unbeaten national championship team of 1971.

The championship season concluded in the first week of December that year, a paradoxical time of individual expression and unity of purpose. After several years of near misses, it was also time for the football team at Cal Lutheran College to win an NAIA Division II title, 30-14, over Westminster College.

The ’71 Kingsmen, in addition to being a great small-college team, typified the times. The squad was marked by diversity off the field but was undergirded by uncommon unity on the field.

These were the rogues of glory and the memories they have are vivid and colorful. But it was not a smooth ride.

Racial differences nearly destroyed the team and forced a late-night showdown before the final regular-season game between black players, white players and coaches. The conflict’s resolution was an accomplishment equal to winning the title.

Bob Shoup, who has coached the CLC football team for 24 years, set a brash tone for the team in the media guide when he wrote of his frustration at being passed over six straight years for the playoffs:

“The NAIA wise men from the East recognize Cal Lutheran, but evaluate West Coast football with all the objectivity of a lynch mob.”

Shoup, who was named National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics Coach of the Year in 1971, laughs when reminded of the statement. “Well, we knew we had to be unbeaten to make the playoffs,” he said.

Unbeaten the Kingsmen were, going 6-0-2 during the regular season and possibly saving the college from bankruptcy in the process.

CLC squeezed into the four-team national playoffs as the fourth-seeded team. After whipping Montana Tech, 34-6, in the semifinals, the Kingsmen played host in the title game to Westminster, a small Pennsylvania college that was the defending NAIA champion and had been ranked No. 1 all season.

CLC drew first blood when quarterback Bruce Drake hit tight end Ralph Miller for a 51-yard first-quarter touchdown. Miller, easily the largest man on the field, buried five Westminster defenders on his way to the end zone.

Miller, a 6-4, 260-pound senior, was called Magic Mountain by his teammates. He had a name for them as well.

“Ralph would pick people up playfully, toss them around and say, ‘You guys are a bunch of toys,’ ” says Jim Bauer, a senior and three-year starter who now is CLC’s defensive coordinator. “I love Ralph. He was too much fun.”

Miller migrated to California after having attended Alabama State for three years.

“I was very active in the civil rights movement,” recalls Miller, who is a mortgage banker and a Los Angeles County probation officer. “I was a draft resister and was suspended from school for being involved in a nonviolent movement. We closed down Alabama State for two months. I was spit at and shot at.

“I came to California because I believed there was a more enlightened attitude. Ha. It was a shocker. I saw extreme, seething racism in Los Angeles and in Thousand Oaks.”

An man who laughs easily and loudly, Miller’s presense was immediately felt at CLC.

“I chaired the Black Student Union and the Third World Alliance,” he says. “I broke up fights between black and white players. Blacks had parties where whites weren’t welcome and vice versa. I tried to bridge the gap and at the same time make the white players aware of the injustices.”

Shoup says that while Miller had enormous physical talent, he had strange ideas about his role on the team.

“Ralph was a gentle giant, very loose and fun-loving, but all he wanted to do was catch the ball,” says Shoup, laughing. “He refused to practice blocking. Then he got drafted as a guard and blocked his entire pro career.”

Miller joined the Houston Oilers as a free agent and played five years in the National, Canadian and World football leagues.

The Establishment at Cal Lutheran was shaken by the free-spirited big man.

“There was a tradition among some white players to meditate before games and get real intense,” Miller says. “The black players attitude was to go into games and have fun. We’d play music and dance in the locker room. Shoup hated it, but we did it anyway.”

Gene Uebelhart, a sophomore fullback of Hispanic descent who now is an assistant coach at CLC, said the white players soon loosened up. In fact, the locker room was a psychedelic shack.

“Everyone was singing and dancing,” Uebelhart says. “It was a time to express yourself. You could slap a decal on your helmet. Uniformity was out.”

Shoup’s son, Rick, then a 13-year-old ball boy, remembers music unifying the team. “The song ‘Smiling Faces’ by the Undisputed Truth was always playing in the locker room,” he says. “I remember everybody dancing and singing the words.”

Happy face decals were a fad in 1971 and some players took the field with snarls on their lips and a smiling face on their helmets.

Westminster quarterback Gene McNamara hit Joe Veres with a 37-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter to tie the score, 7-7, then connected for 58 yards to flanker Roger Price to advance the ball to the CLC four-yard line three minutes before halftime.

Bauer, a two-year defensive star who played offensive guard in 1971 because of a shoulder injury, was sent in at middle guard. Westminster lost five yards on three plays as Bauer and middle linebacker Sam Cvijanovich made the tackles. A 26-yard field goal attempt was blocked by senior defensive end Richard Kelley.

Bauer, Cvijanovich, Miller and Kelley were the team’s strongest personalities.

Fierce-looking with a shaved head and manicured mustache, Cvijanovich is remembered by Shoup as “the hardest hitter I’ve coached.” Nicknamed Jawbone, the six-foot, 205-pound co-captain was District III Player of the Year in his junior and senior years.

Cvijanovich injured a knee in the semifinal and Shoup wasn’t sure whether he could play against Westminster. There was no question in Jawbone’s mind. “The game was the reward of four years of college. Wild horses couldn’t have kept me off the field,” he says.

The oldest son of longtime Santa Clara High Coach Lou Cvijanovich, Sam now owns Sam’s Saloon in Oxnard with his brother Steve, who started at center in 1971 as a freshman.

The semifinal may have been the most difficult challenge for Cvijanovich. Montana Tech was led by running back Don Heater, who had gained 1,797 yards and scored 25 touchdowns in 10 games. The CLC middle linebacker considered it a personal challenge to stop Heater and led the Kingsmen with 12 tackles that day.

Recalls Cvijanovich: “On the first play from scrimmage, Heater took a handoff. I read it well and got up in the hole just as he was getting the ball. I upended him onto his back.”

The crowd was quiet as Heater gingerly rose to his feet. The public address announcer broke the silence with these words: “Mr. Heater, meet Mr. Cvijanovich.”

Bauer, who was raised in Orange County, was a liaison between blacks and whites. “Without Jim, the team might have self-destructed,” recalls Gary McGinnis, an all-district senior lineman on the team who now coaches at Westlake High.

Bauer now teaches at Royal High in addition to coaching at CLC. Three other players from the ’71 team--Tom West, Don Reyes and Uebelhart--also teach at Royal. A fourth, Doni Green, teaches at Simi Valley High.

Green’s father, Don, was an assistant coach in ’71 and still coaches the CLC cross-country team. Artie Green, Doni’s brother, was a freshman in ’71 who saw considerable playing time. He teaches at Thousand Oaks High.

Ron Barney, now principal at Thousand Oaks High, and Don Garrison, now a professor emeritus at CLC, were also assistant coaches.

“Shoup was the cool tactician,” Cvijanovich says. “Garrison was the motivator. He’d foam at the mouth, scream and yell. We knew we’d be hitting in practice when Coach Garrison had a forearm pad in his back pocket. It was a symbol: ‘Time to start popping, boys.’ ”

Arnold Allen, a black defensive back who was co-captain, says that Kelley, a white who had been raised in the South, earned his highest respect.

“Richard was like a Jack Youngblood at that level,” says Allen, who works for a chemical laboratory in Long Beach. “We called him the Duke. He practiced the way he played and made us feel like everything would turn out our way.”

Kelley’s brother, Brian, was a 6-3, 230-pound junior outside linebacker who went on to have a 11-year NFL career with the New York Giants. While Brian Kelley was an immensely talented player--”The Ralph Miller of the defense,” Allen says--Kelley would rarely speak to Allen or other blacks.

“Brian and I were rednecks from Orange County,” McGinnis recalls. “Of course, our views have softened over the years, but at that time, we had never known anyone black. I may have been the most-hated white player.”

The nucleus of seniors was girded by a handful of talented players who spent only the ’71 season at CLC. Shoup calls them “comets.”

Sophomore halfback Steve Ruiz gained nearly 800 yards rushing and was the team’s second-leading receiver. Junior flanker Lance Calloway, who ran the 100 in 9.6, averaged 20 yards a catch and returned punts and kickoffs. “Steve and Lance loved football,” Shoup recalls, “but neither liked the classroom.”

Ruiz and Calloway had transferred from junior colleges the previous year. Neither returned to CLC.

Price was right for Westminster as he hauled in a 56-yard touchdown pass from McNamara with 13:53 remaining in the game to put the Titans ahead, 14-7. Being forced to rally was nothing new for the Kingsmen.

They had fought back in the season opener to tie Augustana, a small but highly rated school in South Dakota, 31-31, behind a 323-yard passing performance by quarterback Bruce Drake.

Shoup received a call from the office of the governor of South Dakota upon returning from Augustana. The state flag had disappeared from the hotel where the Kingsmen had stayed.

According to Mike Sheppard, a junior wide receiver who now coaches at Long Beach State, Drake filched the flag. It turned up in the locker of an underclassman the next day and was returned. Drake staked his own claim in the CLC record book, setting several passing records in 1971.

“Bruce didn’t play much as a sophomore,” Shoup says. “But he really blossomed as a junior.”

Blossomed? Drake was a full-fledged flower child. He wandered off to Oregon with his wife and dog after the season and didn’t return for his senior year.

“I got a call from Bruce a few months after he left,” Shoup says. “He said he had joined an Indian religion. He sounded at peace.”

The next season, CLC struggled to a 5-5 record, its worst since 1962. The Kingsmen were losing, 28-0, at halftime in a game at Pacific Lutheran when Drake unexpectedly popped into the locker room.

“He had long, scraggly hair, a beard and beads around his neck,” Sheppard recalls. “I went after him, grabbed his collar and said, ‘You’re responsible for this.’ ”

Time has softened Sheppard’s feelings toward Drake.

“I’d love to see him now--sit down and talk about our championship team,” Sheppard says. “I don’t doubt that he’s very happy, whether he’s an Oregon mountain man or making more money than any of us.”

Kip Downen fielded the kickoff following the second Westminster score and handed the ball to Lance Calloway, who bolted behind a string of blockers down the left sideline, reversed field, and outran the Titans for a 93-yard touchdown to tie the score, 14-14.

After a three-hour meeting in a Thousand Oaks’ hotel room, where the topics of discussion were racism and preferential treatment, a seven-point deficit was a small obstacle for the Kingsmen.

“We had ourselves a sensitivity session,” Bauer recalls.

Tension had climaxed days before the final regular-season game against Pacific Lutheran. Winning was necessary for CLC to earn a playoff bid, but there was more on players’ minds than football.

Shoup recalls: “Only one black player, Charles Young, showed up for practice on Wednesday and he told me the rest were in the cafeteria cooking soul food for Black Awareness Day. Five starters were missing without permission.

“They came to my office after practice with a tremendously belligerent attitude. I told them, ‘You’ve got a worthy purpose and I support the idea. But you missed practice, so you won’t start Saturday.’

“Ralph, being the natural leader, wanted to know what kind of racist I was. The team was split, some on each side and some who didn’t know what was going on.”

The meeting at the hotel the night before the game ostensibly was to view a movie. “But there were bristles all over the room,” Shoup recalls. Freshman Robin White stood and asked to speak.

“Robin was a white kid,” Miller recalls, “and he wanted to know that if the black players weren’t going to start for missing a practice, why wasn’t he starting at halfback ahead of Steve Ruiz. White said, ‘Ruiz missed two practices.’ “That got the whole thing started.”

Players who had previously hid their feelings stood and expressed opinions. Others sat in amazement.

“You know what a beautiful thing that was?” Bauer says. “We faced our problems, verbalized.”

Uebelhart recalls: “I didn’t say much but I couldn’t help thinking, ‘I can’t believe this is happening to us.’ ”

The blacks walked out after an hour and returned to the house Miller shared with a few other players.

“Coach Shoup called at 2 a.m.,” Miller says. “and we met back at the hotel at three. Coach said maybe he made a mistake. Our feeling was that the entire team backed us.”

Shoup recalls: “What I had failed to recognize at first was that they saw me as a typical white guy ignorant of their plight. I told them, ‘I’m not a newcomer to equal rights and equal treatment.’ But the situation was not resolved that night. There were no hugs.

“The team was quiet the next day and I didn’t know what to expect, but we devastated PLU, 27-6. The hitting was superb. From that moment on, I was convinced we were a team of destiny.”

Miller interpreted the way the team pulled together as a victory not only for CLC but for humanity.

“I thought, ‘This is the way America should be,’ ” he says. “I played football with more intensity those last three games than I ever played before or since.

“We were brothers, one and all.”

After a Titan punt, CLC advanced the ball to the Westminster 17, and Richard Kelley prepared to attempt a tie-breaking field goal. Sheppard, the holder, picked the ball up off the ground and raced around the right side for a touchdown to give CLC a 21-14 lead with about nine minutes remaining.

“A field goal would have given us the lead,” Sheppard recalls. “So calling a fake took guts. Coach Shoup asked me about it on the sideline and I said, ‘Sure, let’s go for it.’ ”

The attitude that nothing could go wrong had its roots in an early-season game against Cal State Fullerton at Thousand Oaks High. The Titans, an NCAA team that was 4-0 behind Coach Dick Coury and quarterback Mike Ernst, pulled up to the stadium in two shiny, new Scenic Cruiseliners, expecting to see a team of small CLC players.

“Fullerton came off those buses in waves,” McGinnis recalls. “There must have been 80 players and 10 coaches.”

The teams had to share a restroom at the high school before the game. With Uebelhart standing nearby, Ernst walked to the mirror and carefully inserted his contact lenses.

Recalls Uebelhart: “Ralph Miller came in . . . looked down at Ernst and bellowed, ‘We’re gonna kick your butt.’ ”

An activist and team-leading receiver, Miller also was prophetic. CLC defeated Fullerton, 24-14.

“We were like foxhole buddies after that,” Shoup says. “We overpowered teams.”

Shoup, trying desperately to hold the team together between victories, injected solidarity whenever he was able.

“We played at Sonoma in 100-degree heat,” Uebelhart says, “and we were going to use new lightweight jerseys. I left mine at home, though. So Shoup said that since Uebelhart didn’t have a light jersey, everyone had to wear our heavy cotton ones.

“Bauer, who hadn’t said three words to me all season because I was a sophomore, looked in my face and said, ‘I’m gonna kill you.”

Vietnam veterans Don Reyes, Rob Marinelli and John Russell helped develop a team-first attitude.

Marinelli once blasted an opponent after a play was over, causing Shoup to say: “Doesn’t he know to stop at the whistle?”

Bauer, who was standing next to the coach, replied: “He’s been to ‘Nam, coach. He doesn’t stop until he’s hit by a bullet.”

NAIA rules stated that teams could suit up only 33 players for the title game. That disappointed several Kingsmen who had contributed significantly during the season. Reyes, a senior who had played on offense, defense and on special teams, was one of those who didn’t make the cut.

“Donny and I lived in the same house,” says Uebelhart, who was the starting fullback, “and it was awfully quiet the night before the game. My helmet was a little too big and Don’s fit me perfect. He knew I liked it but I didn’t dare ask him to let me use it.

“About 3 a.m. I heard my bedroom door open. It was Don. He set his helmet at the foot of my bed and said, ‘Here, man.’ ”

After a field goal by Richard Kelley increased CLC’s lead to 24-14, Brian Kelley finished the scoring by returning an interception 33 yards for a touchdown. The Kingsmen had scored 23 points in the fourth quarter to become national champions.

Blacks, whites and coaches partied together the night of the victory.

“It was the biggest bash in the history of the Conejo Valley,” Uebelhart recalls. “I remember Dr. Tomec walking in with a case of champagne under each arm.”

John Tomec was and remains the CLC team physician.

The celebration had only begun. A banquet of champions was held in February, 1972, at the Hollywood Palladium to honor the Kingsmen and the Dallas Cowboys, who won their first Super Bowl in January, 1972. The Cowboys had trained at CLC for nine summers.

According to Shoup, the publicity gained by the championship and resulting banquet may have saved the college from threatened closure.

“The school was well over $1 million in debt in 1971,” Shoup says. “CLC gained national visibility through the championship, which gave our fund-raisers the impetus to solicit loans from Lutheran church congregations.”

The loans were secured, mostly interest-free, and paid back within five years.

Mt. Clef Field also became Mt. Clef Stadium the next season.

“Bob DeKruiff, who chaired the Ahmanson Foundation, attended the championship game because his daughter was a CLC student,” Shoup says. “I guess the stands were uncomfortable, because a couple of weeks later the foundation appropriated us money for a stadium.”

As for the team, the most enduring memories are of the victories, both on and off the field.

“I remember the crisis situations,” Sheppard says, “and we worked through them because we had a common goal. There are a lot of things more important than football, but sometimes football can be used to resolve the more important things. I think that was the case in 1971.”

“All’s well that ends well,” says Miller through that deep laugh. “We had animosity and busted through it. We were behind in the championship game and busted through that. Every one of those guys has a piece of my heart.”