Pepper Rodgers wore sunglasses as he announced his resignation from the Kansas University head football job Thursday afternoon.
“You’ll have to pardon me,” Rodgers told an assembled gathering of newsmen at Allen Fieldhouse, “but if I start to cry, I’ll use the glasses.”
And Rodgers had to put them on quickly as, visibly shaken, he announced his intention to take the head grid job at UCLA.
“Leaving the University of Kansas is most difficult,” he said haltingly, “but it (UCLA) is a great challenge. The hardest thing about leaving is the fans and so forth.”
Then he added a plug for his successor Don Fambrough. “He’s a great man.” Pepper said, “and you’re very, very lucky. I can’t think of a better guy to be head football coach at the University of Kansas.”
Jayhawk fans are probably a little worried Rodgers might take some players with him to UCLA, including the five or so junior college transfers who are scheduled to enroll here the second semester.
But Rodgers set those fears to rest. “I’m not gonna take any players with me,” he said. “They came to KU and they’re at KU. As far as I’m concerned I wouldn’t touch ’em with a 10-foot pole.”
Everything happened so quickly that hardly anyone at UCLA or Kansas has had time to firmly plant his feet on the ground.
“If a week ago somebody had told me all these things would be happening today,” Rodgers confessed, “I’d have told him he was crazy. But then I’m an inconsistent fellow.”
Later Rodgers stressed money wasn’t a factor in his taking the UCLA head job. On Jan. 1, Rodgers’ salary at KU went from $27,000 to $28,500. It’s doubtful if UCLA topped that sum.
“I didn’t go to UCLA for the money,” Rodgers confided. “I just wanted a different challenge. It’s the same reason Tommy Prothro went to the pros.”
Rodgers is succeeding Prothro who took the head job with the Los Angeles Rams.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Rodgers added, “UCLA is no Utopia, but it was a job I was flattered to have offered to me.”
Rodgers’ biggest achievement at KU? It wasn’t the Orange Bowl as some might think. “It was the first game we won with Nebraska when we beat them 10-0,” Pepper said.
Biggest disappointment? Pepper said it was the 21-17 loss to Nebraska at Lincoln in 1969. “We’d have beaten them three straight years if we’d won that one,” Rodgers pointed out.
Rodgers will be leaving for UCLA Saturday and taking assistants Dick Tomey, Doug Weaver, Terry Donahue and Billie Matthews with him. Pepper said his family would continue to live in Lawrence at least until the end of the current school year.