Sure, rattling off national championships is exciting, but there are lots of schools that can claim similar accomplishments. But sports lore -- like the story of Knute Rockne at Notre Dame -- is what makes a university's sports history unique.
Over the Winter break, I uncovered some UCSD sports lore in, of all places, my hometown of Sonora, California (population 4,000). It's certainly nothing earth-shattering, but the story does point out what's so great about the non-scholarship sports at UCSD, from intercollegiate athletics to club sports to intramurals.
It goes like this:
It was spring, 1973, and the war in Vietnam was still raging. A bunch of student athletes played with the threat of dying in that war hanging over their heads -- they couldn't stay in college forever, and their college deferments were running out. When they did, it was off to 'Nam.
One of my teachers from high school was a senior at Loyola University (now Loyola-Marymount) at the time. His number was up, and he knew that he would be going to war in just a couple of months.
He and the rest of the players on the rugby team kept playing like there was no tomorrow -- because there really wasn't one.
One sunny 1973 weekend, the Loyola players took a trip to San Diego to play UCSD. The players rolled out of bed in the morning and headed for breakfast before the game.
And outside of Denny's -- the last place I'd ever expect for an epiphany of any kind -- the players saw the headline in the San Diego Union.
I imagine it said something simple, like DRAFT ENDS.
By the time midday had rolled around, the two teams had gathered on the rugby pitch -- the Muir College field, behind the natatorium -- for their game of rugby. In the midst of a war, they were about to play an incredibly violent game.
Stranger than that, though, was the fact that the players on both sides were jubilant. As seems to be standard with every rugby match, the competitors beat the stuffing out of each other. Blood was everywhere (again, par for the course).
But this time, there was no anger. No real pain, even with the blood.
And if the wounds did cause some discomfort, even that didn't matter. It was simply a reminder that they were alive. And they weren't going to have to go to war.
"I don't even remember who won the game," my ex-teacher told me a few weeks ago. "I think UCSD beat us by a lot. But it didn't matter."
Sports are a celebration of life -- especially in the face of death and destruction. We were reminded about the death and destruction part a year ago today, when the Gulf War started.
On the Muir College field in 1973, a group of UCSD and Loyola rugby players were reminded just how wonderful it is to be alive.
That lesson -- and the joy the players felt in learning it -- is far more important than the blue and gold banners hanging in the UCSD gym.
It's not a big part of history. But while there are very few big parts, and everyone knows about them, there are lots of small stories like this one. They don't involve star players or national championships. They involve real people.
And perhaps, in some way, those smaller parts of history are far more telling.