THE ELVIS PRESLEY FOOTBALL GAME THAT CHANGED AN 18-YEAR-OLD’S LIFE FOREVER
More than six decades ago, in a tiny public park in California, an 18-year-old college football player walked into what seemed like an ordinary Saturday morning game. He had no idea that the people waiting on the other side would change the course of his life forever.
His name was Kent McCord.
At the time, McCord was a 6-foot-2, roughly 240-pound interior lineman who had recently finished his freshman football season at junior college. He had left home at 15 with his parents’ blessing when they moved away, choosing instead to remain behind, live with another family, and continue playing football.
Then a UCLA acquaintance named Mike approached him with an unusual proposition.
They were putting together a football team for singer and actor Ricky Nelson—and they needed players to face a team associated with Elvis Presley.
McCord agreed before fully understanding what he had signed up for.
The night before the game, he traveled to Hollywood and met Ricky Nelson for the first time. The next morning, the players gathered at UCLA before caravanning to a small park in the Burbank area.
And then the Cadillacs arrived.
According to McCord’s recollection, Elvis Presley appeared with members of his circle, including Sonny West, Red West, and Alan Fortas. For an 18-year-old who had never met any of them, the sight must have been surreal.
This wasn’t a movie set.
This wasn’t a concert.
It was a football game.
And McCord was there to hit people.
The game began around 9 or 10 in the morning on a cold February day. What followed became the unexpected turning point of his life.
McCord remembers Ricky Nelson’s team taking the lead and continuing to hold it until darkness made the game impossible to continue.
But the football wasn’t the only thing that mattered.
McCord had caught the attention of Sonny and Red West and several others in Elvis’s circle.
Years later, McCord would recall the encounter as a “pebble” thrown into a pond—a tiny event that created ripples throughout the rest of his life.
One of those ripples was friendship.
Another was Hollywood.
And another led directly back to Elvis Presley.
McCord became friends with Ricky Nelson and soon found himself around the set of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Ozzie Nelson even began giving the young football player small lines.
For someone who had never planned on becoming an actor, everything was happening incredibly fast.
Then came Viva Las Vegas.
McCord traveled to Las Vegas as part of the production, alongside other football players who had been connected to the earlier game. Suddenly, the teenager who had once been living away from his parents was standing near Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret while one of Elvis’s most famous movies was being filmed.
He remembers the football players staying at the Tally Ho and eating enormous breakfasts at the Dunes.
They apparently ate so much that the buffet manager eventually confronted them and jokingly established a new rule: one trip through the line.
It was a small behind-the-scenes detail, but it captured something the polished movie histories rarely show—the ordinary, sometimes funny reality of making a major Hollywood production.
McCord also remembered receiving a daily per diem while in Las Vegas. Unlike some of the other young men, he didn’t gamble his money away. He had a wife and a young daughter, and he knew exactly where that money needed to go.
But perhaps the most extraordinary part was simply being there.
Elvis was working.
Ann-Margret was performing.
And McCord was close enough to watch it all happen.
Yet the biggest surprise was still ahead.
Years later, McCord discovered that he had appeared in more Elvis productions than he had originally realized. Old photographs and footage eventually revealed just how deeply that brief football game had connected him to Elvis’s Hollywood world.
His friendship with Red West continued as well. In fact, decades later, Red reportedly called McCord while working on a book and asked him to help fact-check the football game they had played nearly 70 years earlier.
McCord’s answer was immediate.
“We won, Red.”
The memory had never disappeared.
Neither had the friendships.
The connections even extended to James Burton, the legendary guitarist who had played with Ricky Nelson before eventually becoming one of the most important musicians in Elvis Presley’s later career.
According to McCord’s recollection, Elvis had admired Burton’s work with Ricky Nelson and remembered the young guitarist from television.
But McCord’s own story was about to move far beyond Elvis.
His acting career continued to develop, eventually leading him to Jack Webb and Dragnet. In 1968, McCord and Martin Milner debuted Adam-12, the television series that would make McCord famous in his own right.
And then, incredibly, Elvis and McCord crossed paths again.
While Adam-12 was being filmed on the Universal lot, Elvis was nearby working on Change of Habit with Mary Tyler Moore.
McCord remembers visiting Elvis between productions.
The conversations weren’t necessarily dramatic.
They were surprisingly normal.
Elvis would ask what McCord was doing. McCord would ask about Elvis’s work. They were two actors working on different productions, talking like old acquaintances.
But years after that original football game, Elvis did something McCord would never forget.
During an Elvis performance in Las Vegas, McCord and his wife were in the audience.
Then Elvis stopped and introduced him.
The young football player from that tiny California park was no longer an unknown teenager.
He was now the star of Adam-12.
And Elvis remembered him.
For McCord, that moment represented everything the original football game had set in motion.
One Saturday morning.
One football game.
One chance meeting.
One group of Cadillacs arriving at a little public park.
And an 18-year-old who had no idea that he was standing at the beginning of a chain of events that would connect him to Ricky Nelson, Sonny West, Red West, James Burton, Hollywood, Viva Las Vegas, and eventually Elvis Presley himself.
That is what makes this story so fascinating.
It isn’t simply a story about Elvis.
It’s a story about how one ordinary moment can completely redirect a person’s life.
McCord went to the football game expecting nothing more than a tough morning on the field.
He walked away with friendships, movie opportunities, a television career, and memories that would last for more than six decades.
And perhaps the most remarkable part is that Elvis never forgot the young man he met there.