Overview:
The young Gauchos of 1965 stunned the small-college football world with an 8-1 regular season which included epic road victories at Hawai'i and Nevada
UC Santa Barbara was a young, blossoming campus in 1965.
It hadn’t been scarred yet by the thorns of political unrest that arose during the Vietnam War.
Forty-four Gauchos enjoyed the flower of their youth that autumn during a surprisingly glorious football season.
It reached full bloom at the Camellia Bowl, a small-college regional championship that was played 60 years ago this week in Sacramento.
UCSB lost in a rainstorm to second-ranked, small-college power Cal State Los Angeles, 18-10. Both schools soon lost the sport of football to its escalating price tag.
But those Gauchos never lost the love for their school. They organized into a major fund-raising team.
Several of them remain active in supporting UCSB even as they enter their 80s.
The university acknowledged the lasting impact that team had by inducting it en masse into its Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame in 2008.
The magic of 1965 still rings true to the players as if sung from one of the 1960s’ top musicals: “there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.”
Mel Gregory, a senior defensive back, got emotional when I once asked about that season.
“It’s like the birth of a daughter, or something like that,” he replied. “It’s taken time to get the insight of just how exciting and magical those times were.”
Glory Days
It was a different world in 1965. UCSB’s enrollment of about 6,000 was less than a quarter of what it is today.
The late Donn Bernstein, the San Francisco Examiner sportswriter who became the Gauchos’ first full-time media relations director, found a peppy, preppy culture when he first wheeled his “rusted, red Hillman Minx ragtop” through the student village of Isla Vista in 1964.
“It was a hang-loose, fun-filled community where a fraternity beer bust, a sorority dance or a dormitory volleyball game highlighted the weekend activity calendar,” he once mused.
“Pep rallies were fall fixtures, and Spring Sing was the cultural highlight of the year.”
John Keever, a tight end on the 1965 team, witnessed the campus’ dramatic transformation during the many decades he served UCSB in alumni activities.
“Having a football program at a Division II school was really a big deal,” he said. “If you were a student at UCSB, you lived in Isla Vista or on campus, and everybody came to the football games.”
Jack Camp Curtice, the coach who made UCSB his final stop of a longtime career, summed up that team’s connection during a reunion held just one month before his death in 1982.
“We’d win one from Santa Clara now and then,” he began. “I used to think that was a thrill.
“When I came here, I realized something more important … We love one another. That’s something nobody can take away.”
Curtice, known in football circles as “Cactus Jack,” brought a folksy, old-school approach to UCSB when hired in 1963. Two-way starter Paul Vallerga described him as “a father figure.”
He insisted that his players wear coats and ties when representing the university and coined phrases such as, “Yes sir, no sir, clean underwear and a clean handkerchief will get you through life.”
“He taught the game of life, and he used football as the vehicle for doing that,” said Bart Weitzenberg, the pulling offensive guard for the 1965 Gauchos.
My father, former Santa Barbara News-Press sports editor Phil Patton, catalogued a treasure-trove of Curtice one-liners while covering that UCSB team.
One detailed the coin flip that preceded their rain-soaked game at Hawai‘i. Curtice, he wrote, instructed co-captains Bob Blindbury and Dick Kezirian to “take the shallow end of the field.”
The Gauchos won the soggy game, 3-0, when Blindbury corralled the muddy pigskin that Jim Barber hiked his way and placed it into the puddle from which Steve Ford kicked a 25-yard field goal.
Afterward, Curtice told Pops, “That wasn’t really the ball that went over the goal posts … If anyone looked close, that was a catfish that Steve Ford kicked.”
Bernstein described Curtice as “a craggy Kentuckian whose backwoods approach to coaching belied his genius for developing sophisticated offenses.”
He was known around the country as “Mr. Forward Pass” for the innovations he brainstormed during stints at UTEP, Utah and Stanford.
The late Mike Warren, a defensive back who sat out the 1965 season with a back injury, saw Curtice’s brilliance in action after dusting off the Camellia Bowl game film more than two decades later.
“Curtice was a real creative thinker, and that game was one of the best examples of that,” he said during his first season as UCSB’s head football coach.
“I watched it with my defensive coordinator, Rick Candaele, and we couldn’t believe all the different formations double-slots, triple-slots.
“They’d get it to where they had more receivers on one side than their opponent could cover.”
The Los Angeles Times’ account of the 1965 Camellia Bowl noted that Curtice tried “double-flanker, wingback reverse, throwback passes and even a lateral-forward pass (now known as the shovel pass) to keep the far-heavier CSLA defense on its heels.”
Times’ reporter Jeff Prugh calculated that the Gauchos were outweighed on the line by 15 pounds per man.
Man of Motivation
Kezirian didn’t plan on playing beyond freshman ball, but Curtice changed his mind.
“I came from one of those one-room country schools near Fresno, and coming to UCSB was a big jump for me academically,” he said.
“I knew I wasn’t big enough to ever play in the pros, so I wanted to concentrate on school.”
But one of Curtice’s first moves as coach was to gather the 1964 freshman team together for a meeting at the Ortega Hall Commons.
“After just a few minutes of hearing him speak, I knew this was the kind of person I wanted to hang around,” Kezirian said.
“I didn’t want to miss it … I felt that this was going to develop into something special.”
Curtice hired such quality assistants as Andy Everest, his former Stanford assistant who would later coach in the NFL.
He also brought in Pete Riehlman, a hard-nosed defensive coordinator and recruiter who later served as the head coach at Chico State.
He set up a pregame training table of steak and eggs. He also insisted upon first-class accommodations on road trips.
“Curtice just brought in a high-class organization from the trainers on down,” quarterback Mike Hitchman said. “Before, Santa Barbara just had a bunch of little roughneck ball players.
“We realized with Curtice that we had to step up and play a notch higher.
“The old man was a class act, and it all culminated with that bowl game.”
Curtice’s stature attracted several top high school recruits to UCSB. Both Hitchman and Vallerga, a wingback on offense and safety on defense, had been courted by Pac-8 schools.
But the Gauchos of 1965 figured to be a year or two away from success. The roster of 44 included 20 sophomores, many of whom were pressed into starting roles.
“We had something like eight first-team players from spring ball quit the team before that season started,” Kezirian said. “Coach Curtice was an old-time fellow, and he had some strict rules.
“They sort of wore on a couple of the veterans. We had to use the sophomores, but we didn’t really expect anything that year.
“As it turned out, we became a real close-knit family.”
Young Blood
That sophomore bunch, which went 6-0 as a freshman team, stepped up to the challenge.
They included four players who would later join Kezirian in the Gaucho Hall of Fame: Hitchman, Vallerga, Weitzenberg and Corky Barrett, a tenacious nose guard.
Barrett had played quarterback in high school and Weitzenberg was a receiver, but Riehlman herded them off to the weight room to convert them into linemen.
The team’s game plan on both sides of the ball was built on quickness.
Its defense, known as the “Green Weenies” for its youth and lack of size, started the season with shutouts of 20-0 against San Fernando Valley State (now Cal State Northridge) and 47-0 against Redlands.
The bigger test came the following week with a trip to Reno to play the University of Nevada.
The Gauchos overcame the 100-degree heat and a late deficit to beat the Wolfpack, 21-18, on Hitchman’s touchdown run.
“It was a good opponent and we hung in there under tough conditions,” Kezirian said.
“I suppose you could say it was a turning point for us.”
UCSB followed it up by trouncing UC Davis, 34-6.
The Gauchos lost the following week, 28-7, to fifth-ranked Long Beach State — their only defeat in nine regular-season games — but it was long forgotten by the next weekend.
Hated Santa Clara was coming to La Playa Stadium for UCSB’s homecoming game.
Many of the Gauchos were Northern Californians who had a built-in rivalry against the unbeaten, sixth-ranked Broncos. Several had played high school football against some of Santa Clara’s players.
A crowd of 9,000 packed into La Playa Stadium to witness the fireworks.
The Gauchos’ emotions were ratcheted even higher that week when Jason Franci, their star receiver, rushed home to the Bay Area after his mother was hit by a car and seriously injured.
“When Jason left, he wasn’t even sure if she was alive or not,” Kezirian recalled. “We didn’t expect to see him at the game.”
Franci, however, caught a Saturday morning flight from San Francisco and arrived at the stadium just before the Gauchos were to take the field.
“When he appeared in the locker room, we were all just stunned,” Kezirian said. “He walks in, white as a sheet. He was drained. He looked like a ghost.
“We knew that if we opened our mouths, we’d just burst out in tears.
“It was one of the most heroic things I’ve ever seen in my life, coming back like that to be part of the team.”
Hitchman recalled “The old man giving one of his better inspirational talks.”
And then linebacker-fullback Mike Thomas, UCSB’s emotional leader, reacted by lifting Curtice into the air and yelling, “We’re gonna kill ‘em! We’re gonna do it!”
The Gauchos stampeded the locker room door … only to find it locked. The unlucky players who reached the door first were slammed and pinned against it.
“It was like a Bill Cosby routine,” Hitchman pointed out.
Franci, literally dressing on the field during the kickoff, caught six passes and had a kickoff return of 20 yards set up a crucial score.
Bronco Busters
No one had a bigger game than Hitchman.
The Gauchos trailed 13-6 late in the fourth quarter when he circled around right end, picked up a crushing, downfield block from Blindbury, and burst through a pair of tacklers for a 33-yard touchdown.
“I tore my hamstring on that run,” Hitchman said. “I came off the field and told coach, ‘I’m hurt … I’m hurt.’
“But in the excitement of setting up the point-after conversion, he just kept saying, ‘Run the same play! Run the same play!’”
Curtice wanted nothing to do with a tie and called for a two-point conversion … while not realizing that he had an injured quarterback.
“All I remember was I tucked it inside, and someone came up and speared me,” Hitchman said. “Unbelievably, that tore the bun muscle away from my other leg.
“I looked up through all the arms and legs, trying to find the referee. When I saw his arms go up — well, that was a real special moment for me.”
UCSB still needed two more big moments to pull out the win.
A Gaucho fumble forced the Green Weenies to make back-to-back goal-line stands in the closing minutes.
Fred Opezzo sealed the victory with an end-zone interception.
“At that point,” Hitchman said, “we realized, ‘Hey, we’ve really got something going here.’”
The Gauchos trounced Cal Western the next week, 34-6, before winning the mud-wrestling contest in Hawai‘i.
That left one final obstacle to a Camellia Bowl berth: the rivalry game at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. The Gauchos steamrolled the Mustangs, 35-6.
Kezirian recalled that several players had mixed feels about playing in a bowl game, noting how final exams would be held during the three additional weeks of practice.
“But after we beat Cal Poly,” Gregory said, “we were all chanting on the field: ‘Camellia Bowl! Camellia Bowl!’”
Mud in Their Eyes
L.A. State was a scary opponent. Five of its players continued on to play in the NFL.
Lineman Don Davis was the second-round draft pick of the New York Giants. Jim Weatherwax, the Diablos’ 267-pound defensive tackle, played in two Super Bowls for the Green Bay Packers.
The hobbled Hitchman, who had to be taped before each game in a position where he would take snaps, could no longer be used as an option threat to run.
His left arm proved deadly, however. He completed a Camellia Bowl-record 17 passes.
Franci, who later played briefly for the NFL’s Denver Broncos before catching on in the Canadian Football League, caught seven of them for 123 yards — another bowl record.
UCSB led 10-0 in the first half on Franci’s 10-yard TD catch and Ford’s 35-yard field goal. Another touchdown was called back on what Gregory recalled was, “a mystery holding call.”
“They were a lot bigger, but we were much quicker,” said Kezirian, who drew Weatherwax as his assignment.
“I could do a fire-out block before they could even get out of their stance.”
The coaches didn’t wait until the end of the game to thank the team for its extraordinary devotion. It became the focal point of their halftime speech.
“A whole different set of things came out of the coaches at that time because this was a big deal,” said Preston Hensley, a junior lineman on the team. “What was great was how complimentary they were to us, and how proud they were.
“It was something I hadn’t heard before during a halftime talk.”
By that time, however, the threatening, Sacramento sky was unleashing a downpour. It muddied up UCSB’s passing game and gave the beefy Diablos an advantage with their running game.
“They had a big fullback, a great player, Chavez was his name — Rich Chavez,” Thomas said. “He started to carry the ball against us and make yards.”
Chavez gained 110 of them in 26 carries. The Diablos ran 54 times altogether for 210 yards.
Ray Jones, L.A. State’s speedy quarterback, rushed for two TDs and returned a kickoff 89 yards for another that put his team ahead 12-10.
The breaks soon began piling up against UCSB.
“We were driving and had the ball, third-and-one,” Kezirian said. “But when we changed ends of the field (to start the fourth quarter), they placed the yard sticks to make it third-and-11.
“I began to wonder what was going on but I wasn’t sure because there was so much mud.”
The Gauchos failed to get a first down with the incorrect placement. UCSB’s coaches noticed the officials’ mistake when they watched the game film a few days later.
The final blow came midway through the second half when they lost a fumble on a mud-splattering pitchout at L.A. State’s 4-yard line.
“It was just one of those games,” Kezirian said. “You don’t want to make excuses, even now. But you get the idea of how close we came to beating a very good team.”
The Graduates
Many of the former Gauchos went into teaching and coaching, including Keever, Franci, Vallerga, Oppezzo, end Jack Smith, lineman Ron Moser and quarterback Bob Heys.
Another quarterback, Al Martens, became a school principal.
Barber, Weitzenberg and Doug Hayes entered the legal profession.
Barber, a linebacker who later served a tour of duty in Vietnam as a U.S. Army officer, took the lead in creating the All-Gaucho Reunion.
He also helped organize his old teammates into the Gaucho Athletic Association, a fund-raising group that was later renamed the Gaucho Order.
The Barber Bernstein Football Legacy Fund, created to honor the memory of both men, has raised $71,650 from 53 donors so far this year for both an endowment fund as well as for the Living Scholar Fund which provides scholarships for student-athletes.
The balance of the endowment fund has risen to $154,983.46.
Barber continued his labor of love for UCSB athletics even while bound to a wheelchair with Lou Gehrig’s disease, known formerly as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
The university acknowledged his good works in 2013 by naming the academic wing of its Intercollegiate Athletics Building the “Jim and Cheryl Barber Academic & Student Success Center.”
Barber summed up the true measure of the success achieved by those 1965 Gauchos shortly before dying of ALS in 2016.
“That team generated six Ph.D.s, five Masters, one MBA, three lawyers and a doctor,” he said.
“Not bad for a bunch of rummies who just wanted a little time in the sun.”
