A Run for the Roses : O.J. Simpson’s 64-Yarder Against UCLA Helped Send USC on to Pasadena and a National Championship

For 25 years, they have relived that darned run: a 64-yard nightmare for all the UCLA players O.J. Simpson left in his wake on his way to tying a game that had more than roses at stake.

Looking back, Vic Lepisto likes to tell people that Simpson became famous on his coattails. Or at least on his back, which Simpson leaped over when Lepisto dove at him but, instead, tackled teammate Andy Herrera.

Herrera likes to tell people that if it weren’t for him and Lepisto, Simpson wouldn’t be running through airports.

“I had Mr. O.J. Simpson in my grasp, and I had taken the proper angle. I had him, and the next thing I see out of the corner of my eye was this big No. 80 in Bruin colors hitting me, and, well, he didn’t take the proper angle,” Herrera said of Lepisto.

When they looked up from the ground, Simpson was in the end zone. A kick sealed USC’s 21-20 victory, the Rose Bowl bid and eventually the 1967 national championship.

“That picture of O.J. running over us was featured in a number of national magazines, and I have been the brunt of a lot of kidding by my homeboys, saying that my only claim to fame, the only reason I ever made it on the cover of any national magazine, is because O.J. Simpson ran over me,” Herrera said.

Was he surprised by the play?

“I was probably more surprised at the result.”

Like how Simpson got through everybody?

“Don’t make fun of us,” Herrera said in defense of his former teammates. “The thing you have to understand is the older we get the better we used to be and that is the only obstacle to our greatness.”

The Bruins were ranked No. 1, USC No. 3 going into the annual game at the Coliseum. But this time there was more at stake than the city bragging rights or the Rose Bowl.

UCLA was 7-0-1 and USC was 8-1, having lost the week before to Oregon State. This game was for the national championship and, for Simpson and UCLA quarterback Gary Beban, the Heisman Trophy.

With this pressure in mind, Zenon Andrusyshyn, UCLA’s soccer-style kicker, said he had a vision during the week of the game that if he wore a golden shoe he would not miss any of his kicks. He went to teammate Rick Purdy and asked him to intercede with UCLA Coach Tommy Prothro. Purdy said no. So Andrusyshyn went to Prothro.

Maybe Prothro should have said yes.

Andrusyshyn missed three field goal attempts, two of which were blocked and all of them within 50 yards, a range within which he was comfortable. But it was the point after the Bruins’ touchdown in the fourth quarter that was most costly.

The score was tied, 14-14, when Beban connected with Dave Nuttall on a 20-yard pass to move his team ahead, 20-14.

Andrusyshyn’s conversion kick was wide, opening the door for USC. But the memories of Andrusyshyn’s goldless shoe and hapless day are secondary when it comes to this game. Even Beban’s brilliance was overshadowed, though he completed 16 of 24 passes for 301 yards and two touchdowns. And even though Simpson’s 13-yard touchdown run in the second quarter has been hailed by some as the best they have ever seen, it took a back seat in this game.

No, the memories of one of the greatest football games of all time focus first on one play: Red 23.

“The ball is at the Trojans’ 36-yard line. . . . Page takes the snap, hands to Simpson, he’s got five to the 40 . . . cuts toward the sidelines . . . he’s at the 45, 50, gets a block, cuts back. . . . He’s at the 40, cuts back toward the middle. . . . He’s at the 30. . . . He’s running at the 25, 15; Simpson at the 10, 5, touchdown USC. . . . “

--Crosstown, The USC-UCLA Rivalry.

With 10 1/2 minutes to play and UCLA leading by six, USC lined up at its 36-yard line. It was third and seven.

USC’s Toby Page came in at quarterback, replacing Steve Sogge. Page asked Simpson how he felt, and Simpson replied that he was tired and needed a short rest. So Page called for a pass.

But when Page looked across the field he saw a Bruin linebacker move away from the middle to help double-team wide receiver Ron Drake.

“Then, Toby yelled, ‘Red alert,’ which meant that the next number would be an audible,” said Simpson, who recounted the play in an earlier interview. “The number was my number and I was in shock. I can recall it as vividly as if I was running the play now.”

So can the defenders.

Simpson, after taking the handoff, faked to the strong side and then swerved to the left as tackle Mike Taylor and guard Steve Lehmer opened the hole.

UCLA’s Alan Claman, playing right defensive tackle, had one of the first shots at Simpson:

“I remember seeing O.J. coming across the field at us. He had the ball, and he was coming laterally along the line of scrimmage toward me,” Claman said. “The whole game was, in a sense, a joke of trying to grab this shadow. You never really got a good shot at him. That’s what made him awesome.

“I remember him making this move in my general direction and then sort of hip-faking me. I went inside and, bang, he went outside. He was so much quicker than anyone of the linemen, although I was pretty quick at that time.

“We used that expression, ‘He jocked me out.’ And then I remember running down sort of helpless and hoping that someone else would grab him.”

UCLA linebacker Don Manning, thinking it was a play-action pass, dropped into the passing zone.

“I was on the right inside linebacking position and I got blocked by their fullback, and O.J. went off to the races,” Manning said.

Dan Scott threw a block on Manning at the 40. Scott blew through the hole and Simpson was right behind him.

“My only thought was that I needed eight yards to get a first down, and Scott popped Manning at what would have been the first-down marker,” Simpson said.

UCLA outside linebacker Kim Griffith was spread wide to cover receiver Drake.

“The SC quarterback audibilized the inside blast to Simpson because our defense had me split to the outside,” Griffith said. “Vic (Lepisto) got doubled-teamed, and I collapsed down and was cut off. That broke O.J. loose.

“When O.J first hit the line of scrimmage, I was split 20 feet wide, and I was reacting back down the line and I think he broke by the line of scrimmage. I had a crack at him as he came back another time or two. It wasn’t a straight run to the end zone. You would have had to be a mouse to follow him through the maze.”

Simpson hopped over Manning. Then Herrera, at defensive back, grabbed Simpson as he made a sharp turn at the 43. But then came Lepisto from the other side of the field. He dove at Simpson, but instead, tripped up Herrera.

“O.J. made a quick turn and that’s what caused Vic to miss him,” Herrera said.

Lepisto, who played left defensive end, tackled Simpson in the first half on that same play.

“When they ran that same play again, I sprinted across the field just like on the first one,” Lepisto said. “And I thought, ‘Oh, I am going to tackle him again.’

“All of a sudden Herrera came up and was standing there to make the tackle. But I was coming across so hard thinking I would tackle O.J. that we fell over each. That was the reason he got through.”

Simpson headed for the sideline behind Drake, who was trying to block UCLA safety Sandy Green.

“I was on the sideline and I felt that if I could get back to the middle of the field I might be able to outrun those guys to the end zone,” Simpson said. “So I just cut to the middle, went by a couple of guys and our Earl McCullouch was making a screening block on Green.”

Simpson cut back in at UCLA’s 40 and headed toward the middle at about the 30.

But the Bruins had one last chance.

“Well at that point in time, after 10 people had missed him, it was all up to me and I was in the wrong place to do it,” said Mark Gustafson, who played defensive tackle. “I was one of the last guys to have a chance to tackle him, and I didn’t even touch him.

“He was going one direction and I was going the other, and he kind of cut back across the field. He surprised me, and I was trying to cut him off further up the field because I knew how fast he was. I overplayed it and he cut back across the green, and once he did that with his speed there wasn’t any way to make up for my mistake.”

Gustafson chased Simpson into the end zone. “I was probably the guy closest to him for the last 30 yards, or 30-40 yards, but it seemed like about four miles. “

Simpson was exhausted when he got to the end zone, but his legs carried him another 10 or 15 yards before he stopped.

Rikki Aldridge kicked the extra point, and USC held on the remaining 10:30 minutes to win.

USC went on to defeat Indiana, 14-3, in the Rose Bowl and win the national championship. Beban, a senior, won the Heisman Trophy. Simpson won it for the next season, 1968.

“I have played against Larry Csonka, Mike Garrett, Floyd Little and Jim Nance, but O.J. was the best,” said Lepisto, who lives in Agoura and owns a freight company.

Gustafson, a sales representative for the Sherwin Williams Paint Company who lives in Corvallis, Ore., said that the Bruins should have expected a running play with Simpson in the backfield.

“They weren’t very good at passing. It was before USC started getting good quarterbacks,” he said. “Everybody who was on the field at that time--of the 11 that were on the field, nine of us must have had a shot at O.J., and to vindicate all of us he went on to be a great pro and did the same thing to a lot of people in the pros, too, so it wasn’t like we were incompetent.”

Prothro has said that the linebacker who dropped off to double-team wide receiver Ron Drake did so in error. He said that in practice the week before the game they talked about using single coverage only, the better to reinforce the run. Prothro has never identified the linebacker.

“I don’t know if it was me. I can’t remember,” said Manning, who broke his finger in six places during that game and played with Novocain. “I just want to accentuate the positive.

“The thing people forget about that game, is that O.J. Simpson was playing with Bob Klein, Ron Yary and Earl McCullouch and Mike Taylor, who played in the NFL for quite a few years. They had five or six players who played professionally on that offensive team, and that team scored two touchdowns on UCLA and another one on an interception. “

Manning works for C.B. Commercial Real Estate in Los Angeles, of which Beban is the president.

The only person who seemed to be the object of finger-pointing after that game was Andrusyshyn, who went on to a successful career in the Canadian Football League. Even Herrera, who was just elected a councilman in Oxnard, laughs when he thinks of Lepisto tripping him up. And Griffith, the director of transportation at The Times, says talking about the game makes him feel old.

“I never felt the anger toward Andrusyshyn like a lot of guys did,” said Claman, a lawyer who runs an airplane parts company in Santa Monica. “People were frustrated because he blew all those field-goal attempts, and any one of them would have won us the game and a national championship.

“But I don’t know if it would have made a difference in anyone’s life in reality. We all marched on to our different tunes.”