Fire starters

Tab Perry would abuse the remote his freshman year.

“Look, Craig, I burned you!”

Stop. Rewind. Play. Stop. Rewind. Play.

Perry would review his favorite segment over and over again,
torturing his new roommate Craig Bragg with a tape of a high school
playoff, the game where the two UCLA receivers faced each other and
Perry smoked Bragg, who also played defensive back.

“To me, they are more like brothers than friends,”
Denice Perry, Tab’s mother said.

These days Perry and Bragg are on the field at the same time
again, but this time on the same side as UCLA’s No. 1 and No.
2 receivers. Bragg, a redshirt sophomore, has 633 yards so far this
season and Perry, a junior, has 452.

“We’ve had some good duos here and those two are
right in there with (J.J.) Stokes and (Kevin) Jordan, (Danny)
Farmer and (Jim) McElroy, (Freddie) Mitchell and (Brian)
Poli-Dixon,” wide receivers coach Ron Caragher said. For
Caragher, the best part is that Perry is only a junior and Bragg a
redshirt sophomore.

The duo’s philosophy is right up there with Marx and
Engels and Calvin and Hobbes: “Make it hot.”

“That’s when you get the ball you got to make
something happen,” Perry said.

They have been making it hot for almost three years now. The
two, who are still roommates, met in high school through a mutual
friend who brought Bragg to a Cal football game where he and Perry
were recruiting guests.

The acquaintances met again in the playoffs where Perry
notoriously torched Bragg on that one play, but Bragg’s alma
mater won the game. Perry committed to UCLA after Bragg did
and they decided to room together.

“I didn’t like being his roommate at first. He
wasn’t the tidiest guy,” Perry recalled. Now the two
have grown used to each other.

“I clean. That’s it,” Perry laughed.

As Perry has loosened up about the cleaning, Bragg relaxed in
his own way.

“Before we were roommates, he never swore. He went to an
all-boys Catholic high school. I went to a public school. A bad
public school,” Perry said.

“I didn’t really know how girls are,” Bragg
laughed. “He kept me away from the wrong kind of places and
the wrong type of people.”

But on the field they were not in sync at first. Perry was
playing as a true freshman but wanted to redshirt so he could
mature and get more playing time when he started and Bragg
redshirted but wanted to play.

“I wished I was playing. But I was really frail, like 170
pounds,” Bragg said.

“We didn’t have a lot in common at that
point,” Perry recalled.

The following year presented more of a potential strain on their
friendship because Bragg was Perry’s backup at flanker. But
the two still stayed after practice catching balls on the jugs
machine every day.

“It was different at first, but coaches gave me
opportunities to get balls,” Bragg said.

When Perry went down with broken ribs at Washington State and
Bragg had to start in his place, his success was tinged with
regret.

“It’s a bittersweet feeling,” he said after he
had 64 yards against Oregon the following week. Bragg improved in
his expanded role, catching a career-high seven balls for 138 yards
in the final game against Arizona State. Perry was always right
next to him in the locker room, the first to congratulate him.

This year they get to play the way they envisioned as incoming
recruits: starting opposite each other as the team’s top two
receivers.

Although Perry was expected to be the star this year and boasts
greater size at 6 foot 3 inches and 215 pounds to Bragg’s 6
foot 1 inch and 193 pounds, it is Bragg who is the No. 22 receiver
in the nation averaging 90.43 yards per game.

“The neat thing about those two is they get as excited for
the other’s success as if it were their own,” Caragher
said.

And the playmakers proved there is enough success to go around
when they exploded for over 350 combined yards against Oregon.

“Going into the Oregon game, Craig told me he was going to
have three touchdowns and over 200 yards. I swear. I was like,
“˜All right. Touchdowns are for running backs, I’m just
trying to make it hot when I get it. I’m gonna try to get 10
catches for 150,'” Perry said.

Perry had seven catches for 126 yards and Bragg had 230 yards
and three touchdowns, as predicted.  Bragg is currently
seventh in the nation in touchdown scoring, averaging a touchdown a
game. Perry is second in the Pac-10 in kickoff returns with a 24.1
yard per return average.

The two still complement each other just as well off the field
as they do on it.

“Whenever I have a problem, the first person I talk to is
Craig. He gives good advice,” Perry said.

“Tab’s taught me a lot about life. He’s given
me good advice,” Bragg said. “Like with school,
we’ve both struggled at times. We usually sign up for a class
together and make sure the other person studies.”

Nothing like a little friendly competition to turn up the heat
on both receivers.

“We’re each other’s fire.”

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