Musings from Arledge: An ode to UCLA and its sole desire to Bruin everything

It’s time for the cross-town rivalry game: the USC Trojans against San Jose State South. Cardinal and Gold versus Blue and Gold. Football Blue Blood versus Whatever The Bruins Are. 

This is what makes college football special.

UCLA football is a constant. For decades, they have remained true to their historical roots. UCLA started as the southern branch of the California State Normal School, which apparently was founded to educate teachers. I’m not convinced the Bruins were normal even then, so I must assume the name was aspirational rather than descriptive. The California State Normal School split up in the late 19^th Century. The senior campus became what we now know as San Jose State. Another branch became Chico State. And the junior, southern branch eventually became UCLA. 

UCLA, though separated from its siblings, maintained the same lofty academic standards and athletic tradition as its sister schools, and in the case of San Jose State, the same color scheme. UCLA, however, chose to use the most-feminine shade of blue imaginable, believing that color brings out their eyes. The Bruins also continued to claim that they are “normal,” though I suspect that claim continues to fall on skeptical ears and generates a fair amount of giggling.

UCLA football has a storied history, although most of those stories end in embarrassing failure. Still, the alumni list is a Who’s Who of football greats and community leaders: Kenny Easley, Troy Aikman, Jonathon Ogden, Darryl Henley. The Bruins are currently led by own of their own, DeShaun Foster, a one-time UCLA running back from the last period where UCLA wasn’t terrible. That was 25 years ago. Of course, that story, too, ended in embarrassing failure when UCLA blew a late 17-point lead at Miami and ruined what will likely remain UCLA’s last shot at playing in a national title game. Unless the rules change, nobody associated with UCLA football is even allowed to attend a national title game, even if they buy a ticket off Stubhub. 

But back to Foster, a master motivator and public-relations guru. His performance at UCLA’s first Big Ten media day is legendary. Foster, apparently unaware that he would be asked to speak at media day as he approached a microphone and a large audience, disclosed that UCLA, like USC, is in Los Angeles—a fact that must have stunned the assembled writers—and then had nothing further to say. I suspect Foster simply wanted to leave an impression of incompetence so UCLA would be underestimated. 

It didn’t work. UCLA is not underestimated; they are estimated correctly by just about everybody. Everybody knows they’re not any good. Foster, though, continues to play the media expertly. He made news this week when he opined that for a lot of families in LA, the smarter kid goes to UCLA and the other one goes to USC. This is news to anybody who watched DeShaun Foster’s press conference or has had their order botched at Chipotle by a UCLA valedictorian.  

There was a time when UCLA was a football rival not only on the field but on the recruiting trail. That ended at some point, though nobody can identify precisely when. These days UCLA seems to recruit mostly from their on-campus fraternities and day laborers at Home Depot. I’m told school president Rachel Phelps believes if the Bruins lose all of their games, she can relocate the team to Miami. The players have failed her so far; they’ll win four games this year, as usual. 

That doesn’t mean UCLA isn’t dangerous. Like a pick-pocket or an angry ex, they are always looking to steal what they can from you. In this case, that usually means football glory. And sometimes they do. Or—let’s be more precise—they sometimes manage to take glory away from USC. They rarely claim actual glory for themselves. For Bruins, it’s the hunt they crave, and if they can steal a little of USC’s glory, they believe the mission is accomplished, even if they are unable to carry any of that glory back to their tent encampment in Westwood. 

Think of the Bruins as a small-time crook who somehow manages to steal an original Da Vinci from a very wealthy neighbor but then finds the picture kind of heavy and doesn’t really like art anyway, so he just leaves it on the sidewalk and takes the bus to the closest soup kitchen. UCLA will occasionally steal a win from USC, but the Bruins have neither the disposition nor the vision to do anything with it. So they celebrate that night with a few shots and then go back to failing much as they had been for the previous twelve months. It is what it is; Bruins are gonna Bruin.

This, then, is UCLA football tradition: lose a lot, occasionally beat USC and ruin USC’s season, steal handicapped parking spaces, jump over the practice wall, wonder where Rick Neuheisel got that fantastic sweater, and spend most of your time ignoring the ubiquitous taunts by telling yourself that you don’t really care about football anyway. Which is likely true. 

This year’s version of UCLA is like most versions of UCLA. Pretty bad. Offensively, this UCLA team couldn’t score at a foreign brothel outside a Navy base with a thousand dollars in cash. USC will have to feed them constant turnovers or special teams errors for the Bruins to score 22 points. Which is another way of saying, could happen. Defensively, the Bruins are fine. USC will move the ball. What they do with it otherwise is anybody’s guess.  

The problem with the UCLA rivalry from a USC perspective is that the team you see against the Trojans is seldom the team you see the rest of the year. You get the worst of both worlds. UCLA embarrasses themselves on a weekly basis, so that no fans, writers, or other sentient beings give them any respect at all. That’s fair, as they haven’t earned any since the Reagan Administration. 

But they’re often not the same team against USC. This is the only game they care about. It may be the only game they play hard in. It’s certainly the only game their fans show up to watch. UCLA is 71^st in attendance. In California. For most of the year, you’re more likely to spot a yeti than a UCLA football fan. But one day a year, they come out of the woodwork, clad in baby blue and displaying the same unearned self-regard as that guy Will Hunting humiliated at the bar.

This isn’t to say that UCLA people aren’t good people. Many are. Some of my best friends are Bruins, and that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. As a Christian, I love redemption stories. Who doesn’t love to hear about people who overcome drug addiction, early legal troubles, a savage beating from a pimp, or, worse, a UCLA degree and still manage to pull themselves together and live a quasi-normal life? It’s fantastic. So don’t scorn the Bruins in your life. Applaud their modest achievements and treat them with kindness. Tip them generously.

But beat them Saturday night. This is a late game to allow UCLA fans to finish meeting with their parole officers and still get to the game on time. And so children will be asleep and not be scarred by typical UCLA fan behavior. But that means most of the country will be asleep before it ends. Which is just as well since, as usual, if USC wins, nobody cares. After all, who can’t beat UCLA? But if USC loses…. 

I’m not going to finish the sentence. The Trojans win this one. I still want to believe in a world where good things happen.

USC – 27
UCLA – 16