Balance of power shifts in Pac-10 as California turns table on
UCLA
By Randy Satterburg
Daily Bruin Staff
BERKELEY — The times, they are a changin’.
UCLA’s football team is in the Pac-10 cellar at 0-3, Washington
State occupies first place with an undefeated conference record,
and Lyle Lovett is married to Julia Roberts  all of which
prove that in today’s day and age, anything can happen.
And with Cal’s 26-7 win Saturday, the Golden Bears became the
first Pac-10 team ever to beat the Bruins in five consecutive
seasons  after having lost to UCLA in their previous 18
meetings.
Who’d have thunk it?
But with the dreaded "P-word"  parity  rearing its
ugly head in the Pac-10, nowadays the only sure thing is that there
are no sure things.
It’s happening all over the conference.
USC’s National Championship plaques and Heisman Trophy winners
were of no use last week in an embarrassing home-field loss to
Oregon as an obscure back-up quarterback making his first
collegiate start.
Bill Walsh’s three Superbowl rings don’t guarantee anything for
Stanford’s football team except high expectations.
And 18 years of UCLA dominance over Cal no longer means a thing
when those two teams meet these days.
Past histories are thrown out and the slate is wiped clean.
Unfortunately for the Bruins, they can’ t take their trophy case
out on the field.
In the past, a banged-up and struggling UCLA team might have
managed to sneak past the Golden Bears for a victory. But now,
improvements in Cal’s program, and in every Pac-10 team for that
matter, have leveled the playing field to the point where no
match-up is a gimme.
After Saturday’s game, UCLA Athletic Director Pete Dalis
explained the changes he’s seen around the conference in recent
years that make 18-year winning streaks unlikely in the future.
"As soon as we reduced scholarships, it created parity," Dalis
said. "I think there are better coaches in the Pac-10 (now) than
there were 15 years ago. I think everybody has (improved).
Washington State has as good a defense as anyone and I don’t think
that 10 years ago anybody would have predicted that."
This explanation offers little consolation though for a UCLA
team that cannot figure out how it has managed to come out on the
losing end against Cal for the fifth consecutive time.
Of course there are a number of factors which may account for
one team having an inordinate amount of success against another
 including talent, timing, and luck, among others.
On this day however, it was clear that UCLA never gave itself a
chance to win the game.
"It’s embarrassing," quarterback Wayne Cook said. "And I think
its embarrassing to go out there, screw up the way we screwed up,
and just not look good. We practice way too hard for that."
But crippling injuries on both sides of the ball have rendered
the UCLA depth chart a mere shell of what it was supposed to be at
the start of the season. The loss offered testimony that the Bruins
have not been able to overcome the injuries and come together as a
team as soon as head coach Terry Donahue had anticipated last
week.
"Obviously, that assessment wasn’t right," Donahue said. "It was
very upsetting and disheartening to see us play as poorly as we
played."
The pain is the worst for a group of seniors who will leave UCLA
without knowing the feeling of defeating the Golden Bears. The
taunt of the Cal student section chanting "five more years" will be
hard to forget for several Bruin seniors.
"When (Cal) had us down and they chanted that, it really hurt me
because I’m a senior and I’ve lost five years in a row," defensive
tackle London Woodfin said. "Now there’s nothing I can do but just
bear it, I guess."