Dinner With Burt Was Out, But Sonny Sixkiller Feasted on UCLA

Sonny Sixkiller goes to Hollywood.

OK, he ended up at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to play a Pac-8 football game against UCLA, but there were movie star overtones to this visit.

Actor Burt Reynolds, who was part Cherokee and a former Florida State football player, took a great interest in the University of Washington's famous Native American quarterback. The mega star previously turned up in Seattle, had come over to campus to visit with Sonny and they kept in touch.

Knowing the Huskies would be in Tinsel Town for the weekend, Reynolds sent a note to Sixkiller that included an enticing invitation.

"I'd like to host you for dinner after the game."

Sixkiller politely passed along his regrets, telling the movie star the meal would be in violation of NCAA rules, plus he no doubt would be on a chartered jet back home anyway.

"I said I can't do it," Sonny said. "It was a nice gesture."

Not so first class were the football accommodations. With his mind focused on the game, Sixkiller and his UW teammates walked onto the grass field at the prestigious Coliseum and were shocked by what they found.

The field was all torn up.

The Los Angeles Rams and the USC Trojans also played their home games at this midtown stadium and they had left the turf in a mess for this Oct. 30, 1971, game.

So Sixkiller and the Huskies turned resourceful. They treated it as if it were a sandlot game.

"It came down to drawing it up in the dirt," Sonny said.

The Huskies won 23-12, using a pair of Sixkiller lasers to Tommy Scott and Sonny's short scoring run to offset a memorable kicking performance by UCLA's Efren Herrera, who seven years later would spend the first of four seasons with the Seattle Seahawks.

Sonny wound up and let fly with 66- and 50-yard touchdown passes to Scott, improvising when necessary and seriously wounding the Bruins.

That was more than enough to counter Herrera, the soccer-style kicker who converted field goals from 29, 43, 45 and 48 yards out, and missed on three others, two of them from 50-plus.

"I figured that if we couldn't beat a field-goal kicker, we were really in trouble," UW linebacker Rick Huget said.

To open the game, Sixkiller drove the Huskies 88 yards in 13 plays for Steve Wiezbowski's 19-yard field goal, once more showing his leadership.

In the second quarter, Sonny scrambled around the left end on a quarterback keeper and scored from 7 yards out. He slipped into the end zone as UW fullback Pete Taggares flattened Bruins safety Paul Moyneur at the goal line, and the Huskies led 9-0.

On the very next series, Sixkiller dropped back and hit Scott on the dead run behind Bruins cornerback Allan Ellis for the 66-yard score and upped the lead to 16-0.

Following those four field goals by Herrera, Sixkiller and Scott hooked up once more in the fourth quarter. It wasn't how they drew it up. Or maybe it was.

At midfield, Sixkiller, under a heavy rush, scrambled wildly until he spotted Scott crossing the field diagonally from right to left and rifled the ball to him for six.

It was entertaining to say the least to hear the two Huskies describe what happened afterward on the broken play.

"Sonny told me to go down on a 4 (a sideline route), then if I was double-covered to come back on a 5 (a hook)," Scott said. "When I saw he had moved out of the pattern, I moved into the open area."

Said Sixkiller, using slightly different terminology, "He ad-libbed a couple of routes. I told him to fake out and circle under and I got you. The corner bit on it and I hit him just as he came back under. It worked perfectly."

"I think it was a good play," confirmed Scott, who caught 6 balls for 149 yards. "We should work on it."

"Sure, we're going to keep it in," said Sonny who was good on 11 of 22 passes for 206 yards, "if it works like that."

In Hollywood, these guys didn't follow the script but the scene was a keeper.