OUT OF THE BOX HALL OF FAME FINALLY PUTS UCLA ATHLETIC HERITAGE ON DISPLAY.

UCLA has such a rich athletic history in a wide variety of sports that for years the school literally didn't know what to do with it. National-championship awards were stored in boxes; memorabilia was locked in sheds.

Some of the wares were displayed in the Morgan Center, the home of the athletic department, but it wasn't more than a few artifacts pasted to poster board or trophies identified with index cards.

``It was very vanilla,'' said UCLA associate athletic director Ken Weiner. ``There was no lighting and it was too small. It had no wall appeal.''

That has changed. UCLA now has a Hall of Fame that lives up to its name. After a year of construction and about $1 million, UCLA recently opened the doors to its 8,000-square foot Hall of Fame on the first floor of the Morgan Center.

It contains everything from tributes to the 155 hall inductees and 86 national-championship teams to artifacts such as Gary Beban's Heisman Trophy and Jackie Robinson's locker to films mixing highlight clips and interviews to interactive video displays.

``The way we look at it is this is the front door to our house,'' said Weiner, the project manager. ``You get out of something like this what you put into it. We want this to be a destination stop.''

The Hall of Fame is a stop on the school's campus tour and traffic figures to pick up considerably when the fall quarter begins next week.

It also marks the final phase in the renovation of the 18-year-old Morgan Center, most of which was completed a year ago. The project was undertaken in hopes of better using office space - administrators and coaches now have their own offices and are grouped together instead of working in open-air, Dilbert-like cubicles.

``When we looked at the building, we wanted a more efficient use of space,'' said UCLA athletic director Pete Dalis. ``And we also saw that if we pushed (the building) out east, we'd be able to have a much bigger press room and the Hall of Fame.''

The goal, said Dalis, was to create a place where the past meets the present and an exhibit that's less static.

``It's always going to be a work in progress,'' he said. ``It will have what's current as well as what's historic.''

Putting the Hall together fell to Weiner. He and facilities manager Kevin Borg traveled around the country in the fall of 1999, visiting 22 different Halls of Fame between them. They visited everything from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., to the Rock-N-Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland to college halls at LSU, Notre Dame and Ohio State. They consulted with coaches and got input from anyone who cared to give it. ``You can call it stealing,'' Weiner said. ``We call it research.''

The oak display cases were made by the craftsman who built them for Georgia Tech's hall. The Hall of Fame inductees are displayed on a wall with their names, a brief biography and their signatures etched in backlit glass - as in the Rock-N-Roll hall.

So far, the only signatures yet to be collected are former swim coach Bill Barrett and basketball player Curtis Rowe. For deceased members, finding a signature has meant tracking down documents they'd signed.

Next to the inductees is the most prominent feature, a glass-enclosed display of the NCAA championship trophies, including the four the Bruins won in the 2000-01 school year.

Another prime feature is a 34-seat theater with replicated stadium seats that shows films of old UCLA sporting events. The highlights are augmented with recollections of the coaches, athletes, administrators and journalists. Above the entrance to the theater is the art-deco sign from the now-closed UCLA Spirit Shop on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

The one unfinished area is the Time Out Zone, a room for kids that will have computer games, displays that detail the evolution of the football helmet and life-size cutouts of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and John Wooden.

The exhibit will be turned over or updated every few months. Expected soon will be a painting of Wooden by artist LeRoy Neiman and a game-day suit of the former coach, along with tributes to Troy Aikman and Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Also, graduate film student John Huer is producing more films for the theater.

Although most people might be drawn to the exhibit for football and basketball, all of UCLA's sports are represented. Most of the school's appreciation of Wooden will remain at the recreation building named for him, the nearby Wooden Center. ``Some people will find what we have here a little underwhelming,'' Weiner said.

In the two months since the Hall of Fame opened, Weiner has been soliciting feedback in the form of suggestion cards that visitors can fill out.

One person noticed that in the timeline of UCLA athletics, in which the school's sports milestones are presented along with world historic events, that there was no mention of UCLA's lone Heisman winner, Gary Beban.

``We need to know misspellings or oversights,'' Weiner said. ``No one is going to hurt my feelings.''

He isn't likely to hear many discouraging words from athletes.

Not in a place where basketball player Josiah Johnson can see the Wooden Award trophy his father, Marques, won, or freshman quarterback John Sciarra Jr. can watch film of his father, John Sr., throwing touchdown passes in the Rose Bowl.

``I thought it was great,'' said senior fullback Matt Stanley, whose father Steve played fullback for the Bruins in the 1966 Rose Bowl. ``I always like looking for Gary Beban to see if I can see my dad in there. It's pretty cool because he's doing the same job at the same age that I'm doing now.''

The athletes who are trying to make their own footprints are no less pleased.

``As an athlete, you walk in and get this sense of pride to see all those awards,'' said senior quarterback Scott McEwan. ``It makes me very proud to be part of this whole athletic association.''

CAPTION(S):

7 photos

Photo:

(1) RAFER JOHNSON

(2 -- color) Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson is the focal point of the track & field exhibit.

(3) no caption (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with nameplate)

(4 -- color) The recently opened UCLA Hall of Fame encompasses 8,000-square feet of Bruins athletic history. Jackie Robinson's UCLA career as football, basketball and baseball player is featured in among the exhibits. Also, a vintage Bruins baseball uniform (right) is on display.

(5) JACKIE ROBINSON

(6 -- 7 -- color) no caption (Jackie Robinson memorabilia)

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer