​​​​​​Because humor is funnier when you know it's true.

Fame is fleeting (continued) 

Out of 700 entries, I won. To this day, I’m still amazed. How many ways can you write “fight team, fight?”.

Actually, I didn’t completely win. I was co-winner, sharing the prize with a woman who, incidentally, never even attended UCLA. It appears the Alumni Association was playing fast and loose with the contest rules.

Not being able to choose between our equally ground- breaking lyrics, the Alumni Association did the only logical thing: they combined them and split the prize money. Actually, they combined the lyrics, sprinkled in a few of their own, and Cuisinarted it all together in classic “creation-by-committee fashion.

Betty Crocker song-writing. Presto. Fight song.

There’s an old joke about committees. When they got together to design the horse, they ended up with a camel. When you hear “Mighty Bruins,” you’re listening to a camel. The kind with two humps. I wrote the part that goes, “You can hear/From far and near/The mighty Bruin roar!”

Two lines.

Two humps.

The whole affair was handled with an air of great pomp and pageantry. The UCLA publicity department interviewed me for a five-page press kit and everything.

On the day of the unveiling, everybody was there, including Mayor Bradley and the Bruin cheerleaders. Had there been a price for admission, it would have been worth it just to be on the same stage with the Bruin cheerleaders.

As it was, I stood beside Bill Conti, a close second under the circumstances. The event was held in front of the media, student body, and friends of Bruins in Ackerman Plaza next to the bear statue, which, not coincidentally, was also being unveiled that day.