The thermometer does not often reach triple digits in Houston, but the city’s sweltering humidity is an effective force multiplier. Ninety-five degrees feels more like 105 or 110 during summer in the Bayou City.
But after spending two weeks in scorching San Bernardino, where temperatures routinely hit triple-digits, heat is nothing new for the UCLA football team.
“I think that (the San Bernardino) heat has prepared us really well,” said redshirt freshman quarterback Brett Hundley. “I mean that is a heat you probably will not find many places so the (Houston) heat won’t affect us.”
Thursday’s season opener against Rice is a game that Hundley will be unlikely to forget. The redshirt quarterback will make his college debut, an event that even the typically poised redshirt freshman admits is sure to cause some game-day jitters.
“Usually, I can deal with it,” said Hundley on fighting his nerves.
“This game is going to be a little different … but I just have to come focused and ready to play. When you get down to it, and when you look at everything, football is football and that will never change.”
Come game time, Hundley will rely on months of training and instinct to overcome his nerves.
“You just take a snap, look at the defense and just got to react on instinct. … You do what you have been coached to do and you can’t think about it because everything is so quick,” he said.
Perhaps the only other person more excited than Hundley for Thursday’s game is coach Jim Mora.
“I haven’t coached in a college game since I was a student assistant at Washington. I just get excited watching the players have success,” Mora said.
“It’s really fun to be on the sidelines and feed off of their energy and watch them get excited about making plays and putting things into action that they have been practicing for months and months and months.”
Mora, in his first year at the helm of the Bruin football team, is eager to see how his team handles the season opener.
“I’m excited about playing and seeing our team in a competitive environment against somebody else,” he said.
“I want to see how we handle being on the road for the first time in an unfamiliar environment. … Are we going to react how I think we are?”
The Owls may be the Bruins’ first challenge this season, but compared to their following games against Nebraska and Houston, it’s a relatively easy one.
Rice, whose entire student body numbers less than a quarter of UCLA’s undergraduate population, has not won more than four games in a season since 2008. Rice’s bowl win over Western Michigan in 2008 was its first since 1954.
Given the hype that has surrounded UCLA football for the past few months, expectations for Thursday’s game are as high as Houston’s heat index. For the Bruins, the way to deal with the pressure is to focus on themselves.
“We are just working on our fundamentals and making sure we are technically sound,” senior cornerback Sheldon Price said.
“I think that if we continue to do that, come closer to game time, we will be well-prepared for Rice.”