Bruins Try to Give BYU Unlisted Number

UCLA’s football team does not take much pride in the role it has played in Brigham Young’s winning streak, the longest in major college football. UCLA is one of the charter members of the victims’ club, ranking No. 3 on the list that reached 25 with BYU’s victory over Boston College in the Kickoff game last week.

Now, however, the Bruins have the opportunity to become the team to stop the streak when they open their season against the Cougars today (ESPN, 4:30 p.m. PDT). The oddsmakers don’t think that’s likely, though.

UCLA will be playing for the first time at Cougar Stadium, which has been sold out for every game since it was expanded to seat 65,000 three years ago.

BYU, the national champion last season with a record of 13-0, is being led by senior quarterback Robbie Bosco, who led the nation in total offense last season and who opened this season by passing for 508 yards and three touchdowns in his first game.

All of that considered, the thing that amazes UCLA Coach Terry Donahue is that some folks still shrug off BYU as a second-class power.

Donahue nods knowingly. “I think you have to play BYU to appreciate them,” he said. “I have a much greater appreciation for BYU as a football team since we played them (and lost, 37-35, at the Rose Bowl two years ago). Prior to that game, I might have fallen victim to that attitude, to thinking that, yeah, BYU might be able to throw like that against--whoever--but not against UCLA.

“Vince Dooley (coach at Georgia) felt the same way after his team, with Herschel Walker, won in the last seconds. He, also, thought, ‘Who were those guys?’ At least that’s what I heard through the grapevine. He went through the same thing.

“After you play them, you realize that they are a dominant team, physically. They are big and strong.”

The Cougars have to be to beat some of the teams they have beaten in their streak. True, most of their victims have been their fellow Western Athletic Conference members, but they also have beaten Pitt and Baylor and, in the Holiday Bowl last season, Michigan.

And how about the team that they didn’t get the chance to beat? Oklahoma, which lost out to BYU in the voting for the national championship last season, turned down the opportunity to play them in the Kickoff opener this season.

BYU’s games today against UCLA and next Saturday against Washington should tell a lot, but Coach LaVell Edwards maintains that his team has nothing to prove.

“It’s important to us to beat UCLA because UCLA is a good team, it’s a Pac-10 team and it’s in an area that we recruit heavily, but as far as trying to justify to the media whether we should be No. 1, that has no bearing at all,” Edwards said.

Asked if it bothered him to have to answer the charge constantly he said: “No, not really. It’s there. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

One thing no one criticizes is BYU’s famed passing game, but Donahue insists that BYU can do more than just pass.

When BYU beat UCLA two years ago, and the Bruins concentrated on shutting off the passing game, BYU turned to a balanced attack, gaining 270 yards passing and 265 rushing.

Donahue said: “The question is, ‘How do you want to die?’ . . . They can run the ball. Their tailback (Kelly Smith) is truly a great athlete.”

Donahue also points to the BYU defense, which he calls “the most underrated facet of their team.”

Still, it always comes back to the passing game. Last season, Bosco passed for 3,875 yards and 33 touchdowns. Wide receiver Glen Kozlowski caught 55 passes for 879 yards and 11 of those touchdowns.

“I think the BYU system is great,” Donahue said. “I probably have a different opinion on it than most people, and I may be totally off base, but I think it’s a lot like the wishbone.

“The beauty of the wishbone is that you are totally committed to one thing. One play complements another and one play sets up another and it’s all dedicated to the system. The problem with the wishbone is that it is unpopular with the press and the alumni. BYU’s passing system is, in a way, the antithesis of the wishbone, but it’s almost identical in being a systematic plan that acts in the extreme.

“They are going to wing it and wing it and wing it and they are going to keep winging it--so they get pretty good at it.

“BYU beats you to death, too, but it’s in more of a white collar way.

“They have the ability to release receivers. They don’t have to hold them back in blocking patterns. . . . They get all those receivers out there, on three levels, and their quarterback has the ability to release the ball when the defense rushes. Hot passing, or whatever you want to call it.”

That’s not good news for the Bruins’ mostly young secondary. But, Donahue said, “We were very porous in the secondary a year ago. We’re a little better now. Not great. It’s hard to tell against your own offense. Certainly Bosco will exploit our secondary and will show us more weaknesses than our own offense has shown us in practice.

“He’ll hit some balls and he’ll get a lot of yardage. I hope he doesn’t get 508. . . . But I feel better about our secondary. We’ll have to get a few key picks (interceptions) if we’re going to win this game.”

Bruin Notes ESPN will televise the game live nationally, and it will be repeated at least twice. . . . Because of a conflict with an Angel baseball game, the UCLA game will be broadcast on radio station KLAC (570). . . . BYU is ranked No. 7 by UPI and No. 10 by AP. UCLA is ranked No. 15 by UPI and No. 20 by AP.

According to USC Coach Ted Tollner, when he was the quarterback coach at BYU he recruited BYU quarterback Robbie Bosco and USC quarterback Sean Salisbury in the same year. Salisbury was then the biggest prize. Bosco didn’t want to sit behind Salisbury, so he was going to go to Cal if Salisbury chose BYU. But Salisbury went to USC where, eventually, he ended up with Tollner, and Bosco went to BYU.

BYU Coach LaVell Edwards said: “I would say the defense that gives us the most problems is a good four-man rush. The four-man rush creates a difficulty. The only way to handle an attack like ours is to get on the quarterback quickly.”

Edwards on UCLA: “I think UCLA has an excellent concept. . . . They are a well coached football team. One of the best coaching jobs I’ve seen, day in and day out, is at UCLA.”

Edwards on BYU’s having played a televised game and UCLA’s playing its first game: “Given a choice between being able to get a look at a team that has already played or having already played a game myself, I’d rather play. Teams don’t change that much from year to year.”

UCLA Coach Terry Donahue on the same subject: “For us, it evens out. BYU has played and we haven’t. Next week, we play Tennessee in their opener.”

BYU has been the WAC representative in the Holiday Bowl ever since the bowl’s inauguration seven years ago. Last season the contract that binds the WAC winner to that bowl game kept BYU from being matched for a national championship contest in a so-called big bowl. This season the contract will not bind BYU to the Holiday Bowl even if BYU wins the conference title because the game will be played on a Sunday and the Mormon school does not play on Sundays.

UCLA tailback James Primus may get into the game, even though he missed several days of practice because of a broken nose.