Despite losing 12 fumbles this season, the UCLA football team has its destiny exactly where it wants it.
Right in its hands.
This time, the Bruins hope to control it. A win at USC on Saturday ““ or an unlikely Utah loss at home to 2-10 Colorado ““ would put them in the Pac-12 Championship Game.
A loss, and the picture gets a whole lot murkier. UCLA would rather not muddy it up.
“That’s why you play college football,” senior safety Tony Dye said. “Everything on the line against our rival school, what more could you want?”
How exactly did UCLA get to this point? A 5-1 record at the Rose Bowl helped. So did a late-season surge after a 48-12 loss to Arizona in front of a national television audience.
Since that Thursday night in week seven, UCLA is 3-1.
“There weren’t very many people in this room who believed that to be possible at the start of the season,” coach Rick Neuheisel said after the 45-6 win over Colorado. “Say all you want about the lack of great teams on this side of the division or blah blah blah, but the bottom line is that we’re playing for a championship.”
Last year by the season finale, UCLA was already toast, 4-7 before big, bad USC came into the Rose Bowl and treated the Bruins to a 28-14 loss.
Two seasons ago, the Bruins had a chance to lock up a Pac-12 bowl berth by beating the Trojans but instead had to wait for Navy to beat Army to sneak into the EagleBank Bowl, which selected them at large.
This weekend’s game takes Neuheisel back to a time when the crosstown rivalry decided UCLA’s conference fortunes.
“We’re playing ‘SC for the championship. That’s the way it should be,” Neuheisel said. “That’s the way it used to be. When I was in school, this was the game you always pointed to.”
UCLA isn’t exactly in the clear ““ for the championship game ““ just yet.
A loss to USC, coupled with a Utah win over Colorado, would give the Utes the title game berth by way of their 31-6 win over the Bruins on Nov. 12.
Losses by UCLA and Utah plus an Arizona State win over California would give the Sun Devils the nod.
The Bruins are hoping to shut the door on either of those possibilities, even though by Saturday morning they will know where they stand, as both Utah and Arizona State play on Friday.
They will know exactly what a win or loss will mean when they take the field at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
“It’s big to have implications on our games and to have our games have some importance behind them late in the season,” redshirt junior cornerback Andrew Abbott said.
After the loss to Arizona, Neuheisel’s Bruins took on a new, one-game-at-a-time approach that they believe helped them win three of their last four games.
Don’t expect them to stray from it this week even with the added excitement of the rivalry.
“We can’t get anxious with the rivalry,” senior linebacker Sean Westgate said. “It’s going to have some extra emotion.”
“I don’t care if it’s USC or LSU, we want to go into that game and smash,” Dye added.
If they get ahead of themselves, it might just turn into another fumble.
“It will be fun but if we let that consume us, we’re going to do what we’ve been doing and we’re going to drop it,” Westgate said.