For Some, a Last Chance to Play in <i> Real </i> Rose Bowl : Bruins: Seniors realize that a loss Saturday means others will again be playing in their stadium come Jan. 1.

They first saw it as a novelty, an exotic picture on a television set in the East. There was snow outside their homes in Virginia and New York, but inevitably the Rose Bowl showed warmth--people in short-sleeved shirts, basking in the sun, teams such as UCLA, USC, Ohio State, Michigan, playing in a colorful place, Pasadena, before 104,000.

They also watched the other bowls, but even if college football’s national championship was being won in Miami, Dallas or New Orleans, they still clicked back to the Rose Bowl, drawing comfort from the picture and wondering what it would be like to be in it.

“I used to watch it because I used to root for the Big Ten teams,” said Craig Novitsky, a guard who went from Dumfries, Va., to UCLA and has started 44 consecutive games. “I never thought I’d get a chance to play in it until I came here.”

Said Vaughn Parker, a tackle from Buffalo with an uncle in East Lansing: “It was a big deal for me because I always liked Michigan. I was a Michigan freak, and always watched them.”

But Parker chose UCLA after he was shown the Rose Bowl, and became an All-American. “I’m a West Coast guy, and the Rose Bowl is here and everybody watches it,” said Nkosi Littleton, a UCLA linebacker who grew up in Lynwood and Carson and has never been to a Rose Bowl game. He says he won’t go unless he plays.

“Might take my son, someday,” he said, then paused to think a moment and added, “Then again, I might not.”

For them, four or five seasons at UCLA have come down to Saturday’s game against USC, but not so much because of the rivalry between the schools. The game is a way to end of their college careers where they have played all of their home games. The Rose Bowl is a stadium in September, October and November, but on Jan. 1 it has continued to be a TV show. Their picture, even at UCLA, has been the same as it was in Virginia and New York and Lynwood.

To be there means success, but they have not been there. Saturday offers a chance to erase all that, to go out on top.

“It’s all or nothing, baby,” Novitsky said.

Their cause has been taken up by the younger players.

“We’d like to get them there because they won’t get another chance,” says Rob Walker, a sophomore quarterback who grew up in Texas, the son of a coach who spent some time at the state university, and was nurtured on the Cotton Bowl. But he converted quickly.

“On my recruiting trip, they took me to the Rose Bowl and I saw my name there and dreamed of playing there,” he said.

He uses the cliche granddaddy of them all in referring to the Rose Bowl. It comes naturally to him, and he speaks it almost with reverence, as though it would be the end of a pilgrimage.

“We want it for them--and for us,” said Wayne Cook, a junior quarterback who grew up in the San Fernando Valley watching the game, dreaming the dream of others watching 3,000 miles away.

It’s the right attitude, advised the seniors.

“Do it for each other,” Parker said. “They should be thinking, ‘I might never get this close again.’ ”

He knows. They all know from experience. Novitsky and Parker were recruited after a UCLA near-miss, 1988, when the Bruins lost to USC, 31-22, and ended up in the Cotton Bowl. Littleton came a year later, after UCLA had gone through a 3-7-1 season that ended in a 10-10 tie with USC that salvaged nothing.

They quickly learned why they were in Westwood.

“I think I heard Rose Bowl on the phone before my recruiting trip,” Novitsky said.

They were taken to the stadium and reminded that this was their home field, but more, that this is where they should want to play on Jan. 1 so their friends back in Dumfries and Buffalo and Lynwood could see.

Living together in the Saxon Suites, which football players were required to do in their first two seasons then, they watched older players go on to the NFL or to jobs in which they could show their rings from UCLA’s last Rose Bowl appearance, in 1986.

With each year, they have grown together, perhaps a defense mechanism.

“We are closer than they were when we got here,” Novitsky says. “They seemed more elitist when we got here.

“We’ve seen the ’86 ring, the last team (Coach Terry) Donahue had there. I want to see the ’94 on my finger. This is our Super Bowl. It’s just as hard to get here as it is to get to a Super Bowl.”

“I think it’s harder,” Parker said. and he, like the others, should know.

In August, the Bruins read the football magazines that predicted an eighth-place finish for them in the Pacific 10.

UCLA lost the first game, against California, and then the second, against Nebraska, but talk was still of the Rose Bowl, if in more muted tones. It grew louder with each game of a seven-game winning streak and did not diminish when UCLA lost to Arizona State last Saturday because Arizona also lost and the Rose Bowl was still within their grasp.

Beat USC and the seniors are there, for the first time, the last time.

Lose?

“Right now, the way I feel, I would just be devastated,” Parker said. “That was our goal, and we had a couple of setbacks at the beginning and then we worked our way into position where we could go, and to have it not happen with one game to go . . . “

“To be this close,” said Novitsky. “The closest we’ve been in four years, five years . . . “