UCLA's biggest football victory?
Saturday's Bruins must think so.
Jim Colletto chugged all over the Rose Bowl field on the thick legs of a 62-year-old ex-football warrior late Saturday afternoon having no trouble finding people to hug, the UCLA assistant coach’s face a mask of sweat and -- I’m pretty sure -- manly tears.
“This as almost as good as winning the Super Bowl,” Colletto shouted. “It takes you back to when I played against Michigan State in the Rose Bowl – nobody gave us a chance …!”
As the Baltimore Ravens’ offensive-line coach in Super Bowl XXXV and as a UCLA all-league defensive end in the 1966 Rose Bowl, Colletto won perhaps the two biggest events in the sport.
And now this: UCLA 13, USC 9.
I’ve watched teams celebrate big victories before. I’m including several of the copycat, staged-for-TV, beer-and-champagne-spraying parties that baseball teams throw after clinching the wild card. I’ve seen few expressions of genuine joy like the Bruins’ on-the-field display after shutting down the second-ranked Trojans this weekend.
A USC beat writer said that for all of that team’s huge victories in the Pete Carroll era, he never saw the Trojans as happy as the Bruins were Saturday.
The question is whether this was not only UCLA’s biggest football victory under Karl Dorrell (well, obviously) or over USC but its biggest football victory period.
Before saying yes, let’s consider some other obvious candidates (I hope you’ll have more suggestions).
Nov. 20, 1954: UCLA 34, USC 0. The victory that gave Red Sanders’ Bruins the UPI half of the national championship. The Bruins had been No. 2 (in the AP rankings), the Trojans No. 7.
Nov. 21, 1959: UCLA 10, USC 3. The Trojans were No. 4 and unbeaten, making that the highest-ranked Trojans team to lose to the Bruins before Saturday. The Trojans were ineligible for a bowl because of an NCAA penalty.
Nov. 20, 1965, and Nov. 19, 1966: UCLA 20, USC 16, and UCLA 14, USC 7. Twice in a row, Tommy Prothro’s top-10 and once-beaten Bruins beat John McKay’s higher-ranked and once-beaten Trojans. The Bruins finished those years at No. 4 and No. 5.
Jan. 1, 1966: UCLA 14, Michigan State 12. The Bruins’ first Rose Bowl victory came at the expense of the No. 1 Spartans, an upset they wouldn’t match until their very next Rose Bowl appearance.
Jan. 1, 1976: UCLA 23, Ohio State 10. Wendell Tyler out-gained Archie Griffin and Dick Vermeil’s Bruins knocked off Woody Hayes’ top-ranked Buckeyes in Pasadena.
Jan. 2, 1984: UCLA 45, Illinois 9. With a future coaching hero named Dorrell catching a touchdown pass from somebody named Rick Neuheisel, the Bruins stunned the No. 4 Illini. The win gave them an unusual bump in the polls, from unranked to No. 13 (coaches) and No. 17 (writers).
Nov. 21, 1998: UCLA 34, USC 17. The Bruins’ eighth straight victory in the series and the program’s post-1954 high point. Ranked No. 3 and on track for the national title, Bob Toledo’s Bruins lost their next game to Miami.
Where does the Bruins’ win Saturday rate? Right at the top, I’d say.
In no particular order, they achieved the following: knocked USC out of the national-championship game against Ohio State; snapped USC’s seven-game winning streak, keeping UCLA’s eight-gamer as the series record; narrowed the widest gap between L.A.’s major-college football programs in the history of the rivalry; gave Dorrell job security and credibility, and made the Rose Bowl their own again.
Throw in the drama of Eric McNeal’s game-saving interception, and you have an insuperable combination of circumstances.
I was standing next to Zev Yaroslavsky on the Rose Bowl’s west sideline when McNeal picked off John David Booty with 1:10 to play. Yaroslavsky went into a fist-pumping dance, and for a second I honestly feared the county supervisor and Bruins superfan would run onto the field.
Before their bowl games, the Bruins are 7-5, the Trojans 10-2. Going by that three-game difference in regular-season records, there has been only one bigger upset in the rivalry.
In 1960, 4-6 USC beat 7-2-1 and 11th-ranked UCLA by a 17-6 score in McKay’s first season. Two years later, the Trojans won their first national title in three decades.
Bruins fans shouldn’t expect Saturday’s win to change the course of the program quite that sharply. But it’s big, and I’d call it the biggest.