COLLEGE FOOTBALL / DAILY REPORT : UCLA : Christensen Says Knee Is All Right

Everyone asks James Christensen the same questions, and he can deal with them more easily now because of the answers. Yes, he says, his knee is all right. No, he says, there is no pain. Yes, he says, he is ready to go 100% all game long.

“I’m not even worried about it,” said Christensen of the knee injury that ended his 1993 season in the second game, against Nebraska. The injury was aggravated in spring practice, retarding recovering, but that’s history.

“I’m not thinking about my injury at all,” he said. “I’ve got two more seasons to play, and now I’m basically with my class. We’ve got three or four starters in the offensive line from my class.”

Christensen was ahead of his class playing center when he was injured. He had not taken a redshirt season, unusual these days for an offensive lineman, and was entrenched in a position with a future.

Then the knee was sprained so severely that it took the rest of the season to recover, and when he did recover he found that Mike Flanagan had done such a good job that Christensen’s services at center were no longer needed.

At left guard, though . . .

“I had heard they were thinking about changing me,” he said. “I just want to settle into a position, and I realized that we lost Vaughn (Parker) and Craig (Novitsky) to graduation and Mike was doing a good job at center.

“It made sense to move me to guard.”