It’s going to be a long flight to Indiana for the football
team and it’s going to be an even longer flight home.
The Bruins go into their matchup against Notre Dame as the
serious underdog, but it’s even more than that.
Underdogs sometimes pull out the win. It’s what makes
sports so interesting and dynamic; There are no guarantees.
Well, this weekend is about as close as you can get to a
guarantee. Teams that pull off upsets are fired up, underrated
units that are chomping at the bit to shock their opponent. This
does not describe the Bruins, who have been unstable on offense all
season and lapsing on defense as of late.
More than anything else, the Bruins haven’t looked like a
team that is hungry to win. Regardless of the reasoning behind not
doing a hurry-up offense in the late minutes up at Oregon, UCLA
didn’t even seem that concerned that the clock was ticking
down.
When they needed a score, and I really mean needed a score, to
keep their chances alive in the game, they punted.
Karl Dorrell seemed content to lose by a respectable margin to a
good team.
And he’s right about that for several reasons. Losing by
ten points was respectable, and Oregon is a very good team.
That being said, if you set the bar that low, then hitting it
shouldn’t make you happy ““ not as depressed as if you
missed it maybe, but that’s about it.
The real emotion of the situation is the deflated feeling you
can sense from the stands, or the people next to you in front of
the television when it just doesn’t seem that the guys on the
field want it that bad.
Dorrell has always been even-keeled and calm in his response,
and that’s fine. He doesn’t have to be the one
yelling.
There are eleven guys on the field.
It may be trite, but the Bruins are travelling to Rudy-land this
weekend, and they need some of that heart.
Coaching is a huge part of the game, but when a team is united
and has the will to win a game, it’s more than fun to watch,
it’s inspiring. It’s why there are fans, and it’s
the reason for all the pageantry that surrounds college
football.
One of the things I want to do in my life is to go to a football
game in the South, say in either Athens or Tuscaloosa, for one
simple reason: Those games are major events, with players and fans
giving it their all.
Watching UCLA at the end of the Oregon game made me feel, with
complete clarity, that this is a basketball school.
It’s not the loss on the record or the stats, it’s
the lack of fight. There’s a reason that the lines are called
the trenches: It’s a battle. No school knows more about that
tradition than the Fighting Irish, playing at home in one of the
meccas of college football.
Call this an open letter, I guess. I want to see the team
leaving it all on the field and being pissed off if they lose. Even
if it’s by one point.
That is what college football is supposed to be all about.
College bands, insane tailgaters off the field, and quarterbacks
and running backs on the field finding a way to win because they
live inside the white lines.
To win as an underdog you have to want it that bad. Against
Oregon in a big conference game, they didn’t.
Against a better Notre Dame team they’re going to need to
want it even more.
The potential is there. Imagine if Dorrell shouted at a player
on the sideline. Based on the theory of relativity alone, the
player would burst into flames.
That’s inspiration.
Imagine if the defense rallied and returned to form. Imagine if
running back Chris Markey got really pissed off because he knows
the offense can do better, and inspired the 10 guys around him.
Imagine if Pat Cowan went on the attack instead of getting
attacked.
Sadly, this Saturday, it looks like imagining is all that can be
done.
E-mail Gordon at bgordon@media.ucla.edu if you wish Rudy
Ruettiger was a Bruin instead of Sean Astin.