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Bo Knows: Wins against key teams essential for football program to advance

By Kevin Bowman

Oct. 10, 2014 4:19 a.m.

Full disclosure: I grew up a crazed fan of Cal football.

Nearly every day, I wore a Cal shirt, Cal shorts and a Cal hat. I even owned a pair of Cal boxers, weirdly.

If you were a fan of college football during the mid-2000s, you were probably familiar with the Cal teams I watched each week. With Marshawn Lynch at running back and Desean Jackson at receiver, the Golden Bears became the national media’s go-to example of a powerhouse offense.

But those teams, despite the hype surrounding them and their high rankings each year, never quite lived up to those expectations. And now as I cover UCLA football, some eerie similarities are popping up.

Those Cal teams coached by Jeff Tedford, despite the praise given to them, could never win the big games. They’d work their way into the top-10 and look destined to earn a Bowl Championship Series bid, then lose a critical game and either plateau or watch their season spin wildly out of control.

The most notable example, a memory etched into my teenage brain, came on October 13, 2007 – my birthday. Cal had worked its way up to No. 2 in the polls after making a strong statement with a win over No. 11 Oregon the week before. Then, before Cal’s game against Oregon State, came a stroke of serendipity.

No. 1 LSU had lost. All Cal needed to do was beat a 3-3 Oregon State team to become the top team in the nation.

Instead, a boneheaded scramble by then-redshirt freshman quarterback Kevin Riley in the final seconds with no timeouts caused the clock to expire before the Golden Bears could get off a game-winning field goal attempt. My birthday was ruined as Cal squandered the perfect opportunity it had been handed.

Sound familiar?

UCLA had its own stroke of serendipity last week when four of the top-six teams lost. All it needed was a win over a Utah team that had just lost to a 1-3 Washington State and UCLA would be right in the mix for a spot in the College Football Playoff.

Instead, the Bruins’ season seems in disarray, looking more vulnerable than they have since Jim Mora took over as coach.

Cal never recovered from that loss. The Golden Bears lost five of their next six games to finish the regular season 6-6 — good enough for just the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl. Certainly a far cry from the BCS national championship game, which a win would have put them in line for.

That Cal team never could win in the spotlight. Must-win games became “can’t-win” games.

So far, UCLA under Mora has been the same way. From its loss to Oregon last year to its inability to defeat Stanford in consecutive games two years ago to its most recent loss to Utah, UCLA has struggled to prove itself as the truly dominant team that it wants to believe it is.

These are games the Bruins need to win to take the next step as a program. Saturday against Oregon is their next chance.

It’s a “must-win game,” maybe to even stay ranked, but also to show they’re making progress as a program, that there’s some forward momentum and they’re not just the same team making the same mistakes year in, year out.

Through almost three seasons, the Mora era has produced three teams that have essentially been reiterations of themselves. They’ll beat the teams they’re expected to beat – with the exception of one each year – then face Stanford or Oregon and prove to the conference that they’re not yet at that level.

It’s time for UCLA to finally take that next step – the one that Mora talked about needing to take after losing to Oregon last season. The Cal teams I watched growing up never could. Is this UCLA team any different?

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Kevin Bowman | Alumnus
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