This post is part of a media project called SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage. Pick a number, and consider the list of athletes attached to it. Who wore it best? Or, what’s the most compelling story linked to it? Any person, place or thing is in play with Southern California connections. Star power, transformational achievement, longevity, notoriety and quirkiness all factor in. Whatever leads to a lively discussion and interpretation.
The most obvious choices for No. 12:
Vlade Divac, Los Angeles Lakers
Charles White: USC football
Dusty Baker: Los Angeles Dodgers
Tommy Davis: Los Angeles Dodgers
James Harris: Los Angeles Rams
Juju Watkins: USC women’s basketball
Dwight Howard: Los Angeles Lakers
Puca Nacua: Los Angeles Rams
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 12:
Gerrit Cole: UCLA baseball
Denise Curry: UCLA women’s basketball
Joe Namath: Los Angeles Rams
Pat Riley: Los Angeles Lakers
Randall Cunningham: Santa Barbara High football
The most interesting story for No. 12:
Richard Nixon: Whittier College football offensive tackle (1930 to 1933), via Fullerton High and Whittier High
Southern California map pinpoints:
Yorba Linda, Fullerton, Whittier, San Clemente
Reference books on the subject:
“The Selling of the President 1968,” by Joe McGinniss, 1969
“RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon,” by Richard Nixon, 1978
“In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory & Defeat & Revival,” by Richard Nixon, 1990
“Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of An American Politician,” by Roger Morris, 1990
“President Nixon: Alone in the White House,” by Richard Reeves, 2001
“Being Nixon: A Man Divided,” by Evans Thomas, 2015
“Richard Nixon: The Life,” by John A. Farrell, 2018
Richard Nixon was having a viral Instagram moment in the spring of 2026. An alert to a story posted on LAMaterial.com warned: “Gen Z is Nixonmaxxing hard af.”
The Richard Nixon Foundation, a nonprofit that runs the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda jointly with the federal government and committed to “carrying the legacy and vision of President Richard Nixon into the 21st century,” had cranked out a steady stream of steamy viral content — sleek, sexy edits of archival footage, set to trendy music.
It looked more like promo material for a hip-hop artist than a once disgraced, long-deceased president. Gen Z-coded videos showed Nixon leading crowds of suited men to Biggie’s ‘Hypnotize,’ and delivering speeches in packed stadiums to ‘WE ON GO’ by the rapper BIA, wrote Tomo Chien. In the videos, Nixon projects what one commenter called “absolute aura.”
The foundation more than doubled its Instagram following to 105,000 from 2025. A limited run of “Nixonmaxxing” hats quickly sold out.
“Alternative histories of Watergate are as old as the scandal itself,” Chien added. “Theorists across the political spectrum have long suggested, without solid evidence, that the infamous burglary was staged by the CIA in an effort to oust Nixon, or that the ensuing scandal was largely the work of vindictive deep state actors who wanted him out. But the Gen Z-focused content by the Nixon Foundation epitomizes a new strain of Watergate revisionism that began around the start of Donald Trump’s first presidency.”
In a New York Times Q&A headlined “Why Is MAGA Swooning Over Richard Nixon?” author Geoffrey Kabaservice, who wrote “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party,” framed it this way:
” ‘Nixonmaxxing,’ as I first read about it in The Wall Street Journal, really is a kind of vibe more than it is a genuine attempt to rehabilitate Nixon’s legacy … Nixon is an important figure for the Republican Party to think about as it gropes its way toward a post-Trump future. Nixon was a realist — détente was in many ways a recognition of the limits of American power — and at his best he understood that politics in a two-party system has to involve negotiation and compromise with people who disagree with you.”
T0 show how Nixon was a “complicated leader who thought and acted in ways we would consider both conservative and surprisingly progressive,” Kabaservice pointed out that Nixon did more than predecessor Lyndon B. Johnson to desegregate Southern schools and establish federal affirmative action programs. Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama acknowledged that their national health insurance proposals were built upon Nixon’s innovative 1974 health care proposal. Nixon’s administration created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed into law the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1970. He added the Consumer Product Safety Commission to the executive branch.
But … in his more vindictive moments, Nixon once explained to journalist David Frost in a post-presidential 1977 interview: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
To the point that vice president JD Vance downplayed Watergate as an “idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy,” Kabaservice agreed only in that it would be a “12-hour news story” rather than a scandal bringing down an administration because it had “less to do with the courts than with the way that our political parties have become intensely partisan and polarized.”
Kabaservice summarized: “I confess to having a great deal of sympathy for Nixon just on a human level. Of all of our presidents, he may have been the most brilliant and the most tormented. … If anything, many conservatives have come to appreciate Nixon more in retrospect because of — not despite — his actions in the Watergate scandal. Trump’s Nixonian willingness to act ruthlessly against his Democratic and deep-state enemies is at the core of his appeal to many of his supporters: ‘He fights!’ “
So where did Nixon’s ruthless fight come from?
The Nixon Foundation might mine and remaster more files related to Richard Nixon, athlete.
Sports weren’t just a way to scratch his competitive itch. Wins, losses and Christian Dior neckties from Bloomingdales were something that framed his execution plans, somewhere in cliches between “it’s all in how you play the game” to “if you’re not cheating you’re not trying.”
In the political arena, Nixon’s disdain for being labeled a loser led to his ultimate downfall. Place the blame, or credit, to the sporting live he grew up around in Southern California.
Victories were unimpeachable in Richard Milhous Nixon’s view of life and legacy.
In losing the 1960 Presidential Election to John F. Kennedy, the scoreboard shows he came up short by a mere 0.17 points in the popular vote. Nixon only lost the 1962 California governor’s race by five points. Neither came with allegations of improprieties or fraud.
None of this would define him. Even after he declared to the media after that gubernatorial defeat that “you won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore,” he made a comeback of epic proportions.
Winning the 1968 presidential election allowed Nixon to go into victory formation. Four years later came a landslide re-election where won by nearly 18 million votes.
The 37th president, we dutifully note, once wore Nos. 12 and 23 for the Whittier College football team. Photos back it up. No AI involved.
Born on a lemon ranch in Yorba Linda in 1913, Richard was the name given to him by his parents in honor of Richard the Lionheart, the former King of England whose 10-year run as a fearless military leader cemented his legacy during the Third Crusade. Sure, he was eventually imprisoned by his enemies, paid a ransom, returned home, went back into another battle and retreated into exile. But he was also remembered as a lyric poet and a hero of troubadours.
Nixon was 12 years old when he was discouraged by doctors from playing sports because a spot was found on his lung, and the family had a history of tuberculosis — an older and younger brother died from it. It turned out to be just scar tissue from an early bout of pneumonia.
Nixon grew up at a time he would later refer to as being surrounded by “forgotten Americans, a “silent majority” of hard-working church folks just chasing a dream. Like him.
He made the JV football at Fullerton High, and claimed he and future Baseball Hall of Famer Arky Vaughn played Pee Wee Football together. When Vaughn was posthumously voted into Cooperstown in 1985, Nixon informed his daughter that while he was just a backup tackle on the Fullerton JV team, Vaughn was the star halfback, someone who was “fast, hard-nosed and even then a real professional.”
When Nixon transferred closer to home to attend Whittier High at the start of his junior year, the best he could do was attach himself as a student manager for the athletic teams. He wrote in an autobiography that he ran for class president there there was a sting in losing to a classmate who was “an athlete and personality boy.”
At the start of the Great Depression in 1930, Nixon wanted to go to Harvard or Yale, but stayed closer to home and pursued a history degree at Whittier College. The NCAA Division III private school east of Los Angeles was founded in 1887 and took its nickname, the Fighting Poets, from Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier.
Nixon’s more celebrated victories would come on the Whittier debate squad, but he could also show there was more to his grit that could be shown on football, baseball basketball and track teams, all of which he at least tried out with.
Continue reading “No. 12: Richard Nixon”
