Few obstacles remain in way of Bruins’ run for Rose Bowl

  Jeff Agase Agase had a really funny
tagline that should have gone here, but his editors didn’t
understand it. E-mail him at [email protected] to find out what it
was.

I’ll take four UCLA student section tickets for the Rose
Bowl game on Jan. 3,” I said, trying to hide my giddy
anticipation.

“You can’t buy tickets yet,” the lady told
me.

What?

“But we’re 6-0! The Bruins are 6-0! We’re
going to the national championship game! Don’t you get it?
Now give me my tickets!”

She didn’t like my tone of voice too much. She also told
me that UCLA students can’t buy tickets to the Rose Bowl
until the Bruins have officially clinched a berth in the BCS
national championship game.

“But what about our defense? Dee-fense! They give up some
long pass plays, but quarterbacks get hit so hard by our D that
they stagger out of games speaking Farsi or something. Bring on
Miami! Bring on Ken Dorsey!”

“There are still five games left in the season,
sir,” she said. “And we still don’t know who will
be playing in the Rose Bowl, so we can’t sell you tickets
yet.”

“But what about DeShaun? C’mon lady, didn’t
you watch the Washington game? Sure, he dropped the ball one time,
but he’s gonna win the Heisman Trophy. There’s no way
he’ll let the Bruins lose a game this year!”

“Sir, we’re very busy right now. The lines outside
CTO are very long and a lot of people are waiting for me to come to
the window so they can buy tickets to the Oregon game.”

“Oregon?! Puh-lease. Like we’re not going to destroy
those pretenders. I’m talking about Miami here, not some
podunk team with AYSO-reject uniforms. And I’m talking about
the ROSE BOWL, not the stupid Holiday Bowl where the Ducks will be
playing.

“Now about those tickets “¦”

“Look kid,” she snapped. “Your precious Bruins
have won six games. Six. Unless they win the next five, the only
way they’ll be at the Rose Bowl with you is if they, like
you, have tickets to the game and are sitting in the
stands.”

I always thought the name “Central Ticket Office”
sounded a little authoritarian.

And while I may have invented that conversation in the annals of
my imagination, the ticket lady’s hypothetical retort still
struck some affirmative chords.

Yes, the Bruins are 6-0. Yes, DeShaun Foster is the best running
back in America. Yes, UCLA is actually playing defense this
year.

But yes, there are still those five pesky games. And yes, some
of them are against some pretty good football teams, despite what
their jerseys look like. Oh, and yes, these are still the Bruins,
no matter how many concussions they cause.

Of course I want them to go 11-0. Yet for every reason this team
will make an undefeated run for the roses, lurking nearby is an
equally compelling reason it won’t.

I’m not a pessimist, I’m a realist, and as a duty to
you, the football-consuming fan, I consider the following caveats a
public service. You can drop off Humanitarian of the Year awards at
the Daily Bruin office. If my editors don’t steal them,
I’ll get them eventually.

Let’s first look at the schedule. It’s true that the
Bruins only have to go outside of Los Angeles twice in the last
five games. One such trip comes this Saturday against the smart
kids in Palo Alto, at hardly-intimidating Stanford Stadium.

But I get scared when I see the Bruins are going to a place I
can’t even locate within 50 miles on an unmarked map.
Somewhere like Pullman. From what I’ve seen, it’s kind
of cold there. Actually, replace “kind of” with
“bitterly.” The trip involves a flight to Idaho,
followed by a treacherous trek through the Washington desert,
before a final arrival in majestic Pullman, home of the National
Lentil Festival, whatever that is.

Don’t let the hokey nickname “Wazzou” fool
you. The undefeated Cougars have a discomforting home field
advantage and a better quarterback than we do.

Which brings me to my next two points “¦

Cory Paus seems like a nice guy. I’m sure he is.
What’s really nice about him is that he hasn’t thrown
an interception in his last 189 passes. He says he’s not
Trent Dilfer of the 2000 Ravens, but in many ways he is.

More often than not, he’s asked not to lose games. After
all, a suffocating defense and rock-solid running attack are the
two most important ingredients in a winning football team. So far,
Cory’s been great. But what happens when the opposition
stacks nine guys in the box and a fourth-quarter win depends on
Cory and Cory alone?

Number two, lost in the mix of the heaping accolades for the
UCLA defense has been its vulnerability to accurate quarterbacks.
Oregon’s Joey Harrington-Heisman (he’ll get it
hyphenated as a PR move) and Wazzou’s Jason Gesser both rank
in the Top 25 nationally in quarterback rating. With even strong
running teams unable to get any yards on the ground, expect teams
to test the UCLA secondary in the next month and a half.

And then there’s always USC “¦

But in all honesty, I must say I had a hard time coming up with
the above weaknesses, mostly because this year’s version of
the Bruins seems like such an anomaly. They can win on the road,
Cory Paus can sling a brilliant, on-a-rope completion when he needs
to and even the best quarterbacks get hit so many times by the
carnivorous Bruin D that they get wild with passes when they really
count.

Things feel strange, but for once it’s a good strange. A
clean strange. A strange that might not be soiled by the mark of a
loss.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find the number to the
CTO.