Friday, November 6, 1998
Stairway to heaven
UCLA’s winning streak looks impressive, but the team says
playing
one game at a time
is the recipe for success
By Vytas Mazeika
Daily Bruin Staff
The Bruins’ national championship hopes this season may not
depend on extending their current 17-game winning streak to 21
 rather, the way in which they win their four remaining games
may be the deciding factor.
Winning is not enough anymore. College football teams today need
to win convincingly.
Early in the 1997 season, an 0-2 UCLA team was expected to fall
to 0-3 after a visit to then-No. 8 Texas. The Bruins were unranked
and not considered in discussions about the national
championship.
Seventeen wins later, not a single soul can help but consider
UCLA one of the four front-runners to participate in the Fiesta
Bowl  the setting for the college football
national-championship game.
UCLA center Shawn Stuart, a graduate student enjoying his fifth
year in Westwood, remembers how people said Texas would be the
worst defeat in UCLA history.
Three weeks earlier at Washington State, the Bruins literally
fell a yard short and lost 37-34. The following week at the Rose
Bowl, a furious second-half rally went for naught, and Tennessee
won 30-24.
Then an underdog, UCLA stepped onto the field in Austin, Tex.,
and shocked the nation.
The 66-3 victory started a locomotive with so much steam that 16
other teams have failed to stop the Bruins since Sept. 13,
1997.
After that win the team said, ”We need to win another one” and
then ”We need to win another one.”
Several one-game winning streaks later, UCLA finds itself No. 3
in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rankings and in serious
national championship contention.
"That’s how a turnaround begins," Stuart said. "And when you do
that you focus on each team and give each team its due credit. Then
you can start winning games."
When UCLA travelled to Arizona and defeated the Wildcats 52-28
about a month ago, Nebraska lost to Texas A&M Â and the
Bruins claimed the nation’s current longest winning-streak.
Ironically, Texas A&M almost stopped the UCLA winning streak
at nine in the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 1, 1998. UCLA fell behind 16-0
in the first half before quarterback Cade McNown led the heavily
favored Bruins to a 29-23 victory, a 10-2 record in 1997, the No. 5
ranking and 10 consecutive victories to end the season.
In 1998, with McNown back in the helm, UCLA exploded out of the
gate with four impressive victories: 49-31 against Texas, 42-24 at
Houston, 49-17 against Washington State and 52-28 at Arizona.
The Bruins came into those games intent on showing their
opponents just how good UCLA football really is.
"You don’t win 17 games in a row by just waiting for things to
come," UCLA junior flanker Danny Farmer said. "We had to go out and
really work hard to get good. We’ve concentrated on focusing how to
win, and the 17 games in a row are pretty special."
UCLA players and coaches believe that if the Bruins just
concentrate on themselves instead of the opponent, wins will take
care of themselves. The only talk in practice involves individual
games rather than the winning streak and the Fiesta Bowl.
This season’s magic number for the Bruins is 22. With 22
consecutive wins, UCLA will not only have swept their four
remaining scheduled games, but will have conquered their opponent
in the Fiesta Bowl.
Asked about win No. 22, Stuart and Farmer simply said they’re
just working on 18 Â beating Oregon State on Saturday.
"The streak is something that is out there, but as a team it’s
not something that we focus on," Stuart said. "I think that’s the
reason we’ve been so successful. We haven’t been looking at streaks
and this and that. We’ve just been trying to win each individual
game."
The consensus in Westwood is that the toughest opponent UCLA
will face the rest of the season will not be Oregon State or
Washington or USC or Miami or Ohio State or Tennessee or Kansas
State. Rather, their toughest opponent is themselves.
UCLA has suffered from mental lapses in the past three games.
The team’s offensive execution has suffered, while the lack of
pressure on opposing quarterbacks has made defensive woes
obvious.
Oregon bent but could not break UCLA as the Bruins prevailed
41-38 in overtime despite two missed field goals, several dropped
passes and a crucial red zone interception right before
halftime.
Then, one week later at Cal, the team failed to score over 40
points for the first time in 1998. Two goal line stands allowed
UCLA to win 28-16.
Last weekend’s 28-24 win against Stanford at the Rose Bowl,
though, was arguably the worst game played by UCLA in the past two
seasons.
A mediocre Stanford team was the beneficiary of an offense that
could not put consistent drives together, and a soft secondary was
exposed by the Cardinal duo of quarterback Todd Husak and flaker
Troy Walters.
"For this team to function, everybody is going to have to play
their role to the best of their ability," McNown said. "Whether
that means a guy catching 10 balls a game or a guy throwing a block
that springs a receiver from the backside or something, everybody
has just got to play their role to their best of their
ability."
The Bruins may have been victims of overconfidence. A winning
attitude is a positive thing, but UCLA may have become
complacent.
Stuart has said that right now, the team is at its highest
confidence level ever, but there is a possibility that the Bruins
got carried away and thought they could just step onto the field
and come out victorious.
"All of a sudden you start thinking you’re better than you
really are," UCLA head coach Bob Toledo said. "That’s something
that I always try to guard against, but it’s hard because I want
them to feel good about themselves.
"I’m not a negative person. I think that if you think you’re
good, you have a better chance of winning than if you don’t think
you’re good."
Coming into last weekend, the Bruins were No. 2 in the
Associated Press and ESPN/USA coaches poll. After the game, UCLA
understood that winning is not enough  you have to perform up
to expectations.
UCLA then fell to No. 3 in the AP and No. 4 in the coaches poll.
Subsequently, the Bruins dropped from the top spot in the BCS to
No. 3.
"Now we understand (winning is not enough)," Farmer said. "It’s
just weird that you win and you can be dropped. You have to win and
you have to play well. Teams can’t win by a point when they should
be winning by 30. What we have to realize is that it’s not about
winning or losing but about playing our best, no matter what the
score."
"(The pollsters) did what was right," McNown said. "But still, I
wasn’t concerned if we are at the top of (the polls) or if we are a
couple of notches down."
There is a probability that the top four teams in the country
(Ohio State, Tennessee, UCLA and Kansas State) could finish with an
undefeated season. This means two teams that play a perfect season
won’t participate in the Fiesta Bowl, thanks to a computer that
takes into account a lot of subjective information.
Controversy could diminish the meaning of the national
championship once again, mirroring the 1995 season in which a Penn
State team finished 12-0 and placed second to an also-undefeated
Nebraska.
Toledo, one of the biggest proponents of a college football
tournament to determine the national champion, could have his UCLA
team be left out of the Fiesta Bowl because of the unimpressive win
against Stanford.
"Now if you don’t play in the Fiesta Bowl, and you don’t play
for the national championship you’re a failure," Toledo said. "And
that’s sad. That doesn’t sit well with me."
So a 17-game winning streak which seemed to have UCLA destined
for a national championship could end as a 22-game winning streak
which will spark controversy and reshape the state of college
football’s postseason.
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