Youth Gets a (Spring) Fling

For UCLA’s football team, it might as well be spring.

There’s the weather, which was spring-like Monday when the Bruins worked out, and there are the practice sessions themselves. There is a game to prepare for--Texas A&M; in the Cotton Bowl--but the emphasis is on next season.

“The advantage of playing in a bowl game is you get 14 or 15 extra practices,” Coach Bob Toledo said. “It’s sort of like a spring practice.”

With that in mind, time is being spent on evaluating younger players, an example being backup quarterback Drew Bennett, a redshirt freshman who got extra repetitions Monday. There are two more quarterbacks on scholarship, Ed Stansbury and Scott McEwan, both of whom are red-shirting this season. And two more quarterbacks have said they will enter UCLA in the fall.

And, of course, starter Cade McNown is a junior with another season to play.

“We want to see how the young kids do,” Toledo said. “We’ll prepare enough for Texas A&M;, but we also want to use the time to take a look at the younger kids.”

The Bruins practice through Saturday, and Monday and Tuesday of next week before breaking for Christmas and getting back together in Dallas.