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They may have been gutty, but UCLA's 1966 Rose Bowl team was also gritty

Some of the details are fuzzy now, nearly five decades after UCLA faced top-ranked and undefeated Michigan State in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 1966, but those Bruins agree on this much:

The Spartans were huge. Gigantic. Expected to gobble the Bruins and their 200-pound linemen like party appetizers.

"Some people have said their TV tilted a bit when they announced them on TV," quarterback Gary Beban said jokingly, "but they were big."

How big? "I remember running past Bubba Smith and he was about 7-foot tall and I was looking into his belt buckle," said Wade Pearson, a UCLA linebacker.