Before Rudy the Golden Domer, there was original golden boy – Rudy the Bruin!
By James Thompson Kingsbruiny
Fifty years ago, Upsilon Alumnus Rudy Feldman helped to lead one of the great Bruin football teams and one of the best in the land.
Feldman, the 1953 UCLA co-captain along with Chuck Doud, will be the honorary coin-flipper at this Saturday’s (Sept. 13) UCLA-Illinois game at the Rose Bowl. Those two were captains of the 1953 Pacific Coast Conference champion Bruins and part of coach Red Sanders’ teams that lost only three regular-season games in four years.
Feldman’s Bruins played home games at the Coliseum in those days, but his team did make it to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl in 1953. In that year, UCLA lost a close Rose Bowl game to Michigan State, which was the defending 1952 national champions. Now, Rudy gets to walk again on the historic grass to watch his Bruins play against another Big 10 rival – this time it’s Illinois.
Feldman didn’t play against Red Grange, Illinois’ legendary galloping ghost from long ago, but he does have fond memories of his career at UCLA. He played freshman football in 1950 and then started as a lineman for Sanders’ varsity in 1952 and 1953.
Feldman was a standout at Palo Alto High School in northern California, but he was attracted to Los Angeles at the time – an exciting opportunity to get away and see the world. On his recruiting trip in 1949, he was taken to see a radio show, went surfing and stayed at the Delt house with Johnny Sheffield, an actor who was Boy in Tarzan shows. Feldman also checked out Hollywoood and saw Red Nicholls at Dixielane.
UCLA enrolled him early in summer school, and he boarded at Upsilon Manor with other athletes. Feldman hashed, hung out with the brothers and liked the house enough to pledge. Plus, he got a room his first year and didn’t have to live on the pledge porch.
Feldman’s freshman year, 1949, was a turning point for UCLA football. That year Red Sanders came on campus, and he ran an effective single-wing offense. In his eight years at UCLA before his untimely death, Sanders turned the tables on USC, winning almost all of the cross-town rivalry games, led the team to the 1953 Rose Bowl and won the 1954 co-national championship (with Ohio State).
“He was an outstanding coach,” Feldman said. “He brought discipline and innovation. He had a good staff. We out-executed a lot of people.”
Thus, the legend of the gutsy, little Bruins began. One protégé of Sanders’ was Bear Bryant, who coached under him at Vanderbilt and eventually turned Texas A&M and Alabama into national powers. Bryant probably got one idea from Sanders: “We had no water in practice. The coaches weren’t smart, but we followed orders,” Feldman said.
Feldman married his college sweetheart, Joanne, on graduation day, completing his schooling in five years, beginning another fine Upsilon tradition. Three brothers were in his wedding: Jim Seeley, a two-star Navy admiral who won a national Sigma Pi achievement award; Bob Jones, a member of Ducky Drake’s track and field team; and Richard Rogney.
These days, Feldman can be found happily retired in San Diego.