Football needs to be mighty, fly together

In preparation for this week’s football game, I went out
and rented “The Mighty Ducks.”

I came out of that movie pumped up and ready to kick the
feathers off the Hawks (the very good team that loses to a bunch of
underdogs in the movie).

Until I realized UCLA resembled those Hawks, at least last
week.

Undisciplined. Unfocused. A little cocky. And upset by a team
that no one thought could pull it off. Is that what we’re in
store for this week?

And these Oregon Ducks, while not mighty, can still pack a
punch, as shown by their four-game winning streak before last
Saturday’s one-point loss to No. 4 Cal.

Which will just make this week even tougher for the Bruins.

UCLA was right there at the end against Washington State last
week despite all the whooping and hollering of the Bruin alumni and
the injuries to key players Maurice Drew and Marcedes Lewis. But
that doesn’t change the fact that the Bruins started out flat
and unfocused, and if UCLA does that against Oregon, this game
won’t be nearly as close. Spotting other teams 14-point leads
is like giving me a bucket of chili and beans with some broccoli to
dip it in “”mdash; the end result won’t be so good.

The Bruin defense seemed to show that the performance against
Stanford may have just been a mirage “”mdash; quite possibly a tease
to get UCLA fans to once again get their hopes up. Now, the team is
in real danger of failing to become bowl-eligible. A loss to
Oregon, and you’ll really hear the fans clamor.

And after the final matchup against USC, the offseason will
likely be cluttered with questions concerning coaching stability
and whether the program really is headed in the right
direction.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, there’s still the
little matter of a Pac-10 matchup against Oregon.

UCLA will be at Autzen Stadium, quite possibly the loudest
stadium in the Pac-10. But it won’t really matter because
UCLA got plenty of experience playing in a hostile environment last
weekend at the Rose Bowl. Was that really a home game?

And if you thought tracking the Bruins’ progress
throughout this season has been difficult, take a look at
Oregon.

The Ducks lost to Indiana and barely eked out a victory against
Washington State. But after a rough start, Oregon seems to have
completely turned the corner and is heading for a strong finish.
And spearheading the Ducks’ resurgence has been their
creative offense, Oregon coach Mike Bellotti’s trademark.

Unlike Washington State and Stanford, the Ducks actually have a
very good running back who is coming into this game averaging over
the century mark. So you can pretty much earmark him to get at
least double that. I like to call it the “UCLA effect,”
where, by virtue of playing against the Bruin run defense, a
running back pads his season’s statistics and manages to feel
very good about himself. So Terrence Whitehead, already averaging
104 yards, should get to 200 without breaking a sweat. Maybe before
halftime.

This will be a very tough game for UCLA to win, especially after
what we saw from the Bruins last week. And in that regard, maybe
UCLA is the Mighty Ducks team. To quote a line from the movie,
“Ducks fly together,” and if we’ve seen anything
in this team, it’s that there’s no quit.

But that alone doesn’t translate into wins.

Bruce ranks Mighty Ducks as one of the greatest sports
movies of all time. E-mail Tran at [email protected].