The fact that this upcoming game against USC doesn’t matter at all could make it actually mean something.
The feeling of disappointment, wasted opportunity and squandered potential Saturday as the Bruins lined up on 1st-and-30 on their own 35 with the chance to play in the Pac-12 championship game on the line was undeniable.
The 38-33 loss against Arizona State secured that it would be my last game at the Rose Bowl as a student. My first? A 35-0 loss to Stanford. I didn’t see the Bruins put up even a point, let alone a touchdown.
But now, there’s a legitimate feeling of disappointment for fans that UCLA will not make the Rose Bowl. Couple that with whispers (albeit the faintest of so) of dark horse Heisman candidates and a two-way player that this nation hasn’t seen since Charles Woodson, and we’re talking about a whole different program, let alone team. Four years ago, I thought I’d be watching a four-time medically redshirted Kevin Prince take snaps out of the pistol for a gain of negative two for the rest of eternity.
However, with this comes the realization that for the second time out of the three-year existence of the Pac-12 South Division, the annual UCLA-USC game means nothing. The first time, the Bruins got shut out 50-0 and still went on to the Pac-12 championship game because the Trojans were still on sanctions. And with the Sun Devils clinching the Pac-12 South with Saturday’s win, neither team will compete for a conference championship or the Rose Bowl.
The future of these programs aside, nothing but pride is on the line. And sometimes that’s more than enough. With essentially no way of making a national statement in the postseason, all that remains is the innate desire for both teams to embarrass their rivals. UCLA knows how that feels from the 50-0 loss two years ago, and USC does as well from its entire 2012 campaign, in which all it had to show for its No. 1 preseason ranking was a hair dryer from the Sun Bowl.
The ferocity of competition in practice has spilled over to Saturdays, and you couldn’t say that two years ago. Now with both teams ranked in the top 25 and set to square off in prime time, the times have certainly changed. And that matters.