PASADENA — So this was what all the secrecy was about, eh?
Really, I don’t want to be too hard on UCLA’s football Bruins and coach DeShaun Foster for doing what … well, what the vast majority of college football coaches do, parceling out information sparingly, limiting access and keeping as much under wraps as possible. (I’d do it differently, but that’s one reason – of many – that I’m not in coaching.)
And I certainly don’t want to discourage Foster and the Bruins from scheduling ambitiously and challenging themselves. Opening against Utah, a former Pac-12 foe, is far more attractive to the casual fan than guaranteeing themselves a victory against an outmatched foe.
(Although scheduling your opener at 8 p.m. is pushing it just a bit. And yes, this edition of Big Ten After Dark came to you courtesy of Fox.)
All of that said … it’s got to get better than this, right?
Saturday’s debut of Foster’s second UCLA team, which was also the homecoming of Long Beach’s Nico Iamaleava, was a dud. The transfer who took Tennessee to the College Football Playoff last year – and then took less in NIL money to return home than he could have gotten elsewhere – had his very first pass flutter harmlessly to the turf, deflected by Utah defensive end Logan Fano.
It didn’t get much better for Iamaleava (11 for 22 for 136 yards, one touchdown, one interception, 47 rushing yards on 13 carries) or his team in the course of Utah’s 43-10 triumph. Utah’s Devon Dampier, a transfer from New Mexico, was the best quarterback on the field. His offense was more efficient, his team’s defense more stingy, his team’s fans more noisy.
Oh, and about that idea of opening with an attractive opponent? The upshot Saturday night was that Utah fans showed up, be they locally based alumni or diehards making the trip from Salt Lake City.
Bruin fans, wherever they are? Couldn’t be bothered.
Even with the huge tarps at both ends – which, as a university spokesperson said in 2021, reduce capacity from the listed 91,136 to 69,747 – the Rose Bowl was discouragingly empty Saturday night. Attendance was announced as 35,032, and while the students won’t be on campus for another few weeks, there are plenty of other people in greater L.A. who could have filled those empty seats but chose not to.
One message here? This program may still be trying to dig out of the wreckage of a string of lost seasons, dating back to the start of Chip Kelly’s reign of error. Those first three miserable seasons under Kelly – 3-9 in 2018, 4-8 in ’19 and 3-4 in the COVID season of 2020 – sent attendance spiraling downward and damaged the UCLA football brand.
In this market, with this much competition for customers, maybe it’s time for desperate measures to get those seats filled again. Two-for-one tickets, maybe, or family deals on hot dogs and sodas. Or bobbleheads. Something. Anything.
Maybe even quality football. That, at least, is within the players’ and coaches’ control.
To be sure, the scene as the clock struck 11 Saturday night was stark, the red-clad Ute fans staying to cheer as discouraged UCLA fans headed for the exits. It had to have been depressing to anyone who remembered when Bruins football really was a hot ticket.
And yes, that era in the ’80s when Terry Donahue’s teams won conference championships and bowl games, resided in the upper levels of the AP poll and filled the Rose Bowl without need for tarps represented what now could be considered the Paleozoic era of college football. The current age, in which universities can now legally pay players, isn’t exactly an optimal environment for an athletic program that has run a deficit for several years.
(Plus, UCLA, the UC system, and major universities in general have enough other problems these days that the football team’s struggles are relatively small in comparison.)
But at ground level, this experience of getting punched in the mouth in Week 1 could ultimately be beneficial. If so, the new quarterback will be the one with the responsibility of rallying his team.
“Nico’s a competitor, you know?” Foster said afterward. “He’s not going to quit, he keeps playing hard, he kept motivating the guys around him, so we’ve just got to do a better job of protecting him and keeping him upright.”
Foster said he liked what he saw in the locker room afterward, in terms of moving forward and staying together. Iamaleava echoed that sentiment.
“The guys, guys in the locker room, we’re all still together,” he said. “We know that we can be better than (what) we displayed and yeah, man, the only way is up from here.
“… Everything we want is still ahead of us, man.”
If Iamaleava does rally his team and turns this into a success story, he will have earned his keep. Literally.
And if not …
jalexander@scng.com
