Moments after his backup threw his first career touchdown pass
to give UCLA the lead against visiting Arizona, starting
quarterback Ben Olson was carted off the sidelines to the training
room in the south wing of the Rose Bowl.
Despite the newly delivered lead, there was a sobriety that
overcame the home crowd.
As Olson passed the fans in the south end zone, he pointed his
left index finger to the sky, which was greeted by a reserved
applause from the crowd.
With six minutes and 47 seconds left in the first quarter, Olson
dropped back to pass and threw his first (and only) incompletion on
Saturday afternoon. As Olson was finishing his follow-through, an
Arizona defensive player rolled over on Olson’s left knee.
Olson lay facedown on the ground, near midfield, before being
carried off the field with a person under each of his arms. He
wouldn’t return.
It was a serious enough injury, to arguably the team’s
most talented player, to keep UCLA’s 27-7 win over Arizona in
perspective.
Olson has what the UCLA medical staff initially referred to as a
sprained left knee, but he will undergo an MRI examination on
Monday to determine the extent of the injury. Even the most severe
of knee sprains would likely only sideline Olson for two to three
weeks. But any ligament damage would require surgery and abruptly
end his season at five games.
Olson wears a protective brace on his right knee. Ironically, it
was his left knee that was suffering from a feeling for which he
had no explanation.
“It’s a completely different feeling than I ever
had,” Olson said.
In the locker room following the game, Olson tried to remain
upbeat, commenting on the strong play of Pat Cowan, the redshirt
sophomore who went 20-29 with 201 passing yards and two touchdowns
in his absence.
But with his shoulders slumped and his face, covered by a
baseball cap, tilted down, his body language revealed a young man
anxiously awaiting the news on his left knee.
“I just hope that I don’t have surgery, but
I’m pretty down right now,” said Olson, who finished
3-for-4 for 26 yards in less than a quarter of play.
Unfortunate injury colliding with horrendous timing is not
entirely new for Olson. At the end of training camp in 2005, Olson
was entrenched in a quarterback battle with the incumbent Drew
Olson before he broke his left hand in the last week of training
camp. Drew Olson was named the starter within the next two days,
and he went on to set the UCLA record with 34 touchdown passes.
“I worked very hard to get where I am,” said Olson,
who is currently 79-124 for 822 yards with five touchdowns and
three interceptions. “I don’t know (why); stuff just
keeps happening. I don’t think that I’ll be out for the
season. I think I’ll be back.”
UCLA coach Karl Dorrell remained optimistic about the chance for
his starting quarterback’s quick recovery.
“We don’t think it’s a major injury, but
we’ll have to get the MRI to get the status,” he
said.