66-10!

Forget Oregon next week. Somebody, quick, find out what Rice is doing.

Forget Oregon State the week after. Is Texas A&M; free that weekend?

California? Stanford? Washington? USC?

Who needs them? Bring on Texas Tech and Baylor and Southern Methodist.

Route 66 runs through Texas, and so did UCLA on Saturday in the Rose Bowl, getting 297 passing yards and three touchdowns in the first half from Cade McNown and making a 66-10 victory over Houston easier by recovering four fumbles and intercepting two passes.

The Bruins had a similar hayride in Austin three weeks ago, beating Texas, 66-3, with the help of eight Longhorn turnovers and five touchdown passes by McNown.

“Hey, that’s not a bad idea,” McNown said of the suggestion that the season end with a trip to the Cotton Bowl to play a team from the Lone Star State. “No,” he quickly added, “we’re not thinking that far ahead.”

Said Bruin Coach Bob Toledo of the proposal: “No, I’m looking forward to playing a league game.”

UCLA (3-2, 1-1 in the Pacific 10 Conference) finishes with six conference games, and attacks the rest of the season riding a three-game winning streak--the Bruins’ first since 1995 and their first under Toledo--and inspired by a ravenous defense.

“They’ve scored a lot of points on a lot of people,” Houston Coach Kim Helton said. UCLA has averaged 57.3 points in its last three games.

“If we played error-free football, maybe we could have made a game of it,” Helton added.

Instead, the Cougars followed a defensive letdown that set up UCLA’s first touchdown with an offensive faux pas that set up the Bruins’ second.

The scores came 47 seconds apart.

On the first, McNown completed a pass to Jim McElroy, who beat William Fields for 67 yards to the UCLA two.

From there, Skip Hicks scored the first of his two touchdowns on what was, for him, an off day. He had only 31 yards in 14 carries against a defense lined up to stop him, with no regard for the consequences.

Down, 7-0, Houston lined up for its first offensive play. Quarterback Jason McKinley faded back to pass and UCLA roverback Wasswa Serwanga hammered him, with Brian Willmer recovering the fumble on the Cougar 17.

“After that first play, I was never able to focus,” McKinley said.

Said Helton of Serwanga’s ability to get through the Houston offensive line without a hand being laid on him: “It’s hard to believe that No. 11 was invisible out there.”

He was plenty visible.

A personal-foul penalty on Hicks’ one-yard run moved the ball back to the 31, from where McNown threw a screen pass to freshman flanker Brian Poli-Dixon. He had caught one pass as a collegian before Saturday, but he turned his second into a touchdown and a 14-0 UCLA lead.

The rout was on.

So was Serwanga, whose second sack came in the second quarter, caused a second fumble by McKinley and set up Hicks’ second touchdown.

By then, it was 38-3 because McNown had found Danny Farmer with a 40-yard touchdown pass and Poli-Dixon on a 15-yarder, and Chris Sailer had kicked a 42-yard field goal, his ninth success in a row.

And still there was time.

And still there was Serwanga.

He intercepted McKinley’s pass intended for Maurice Bryant and returned the ball 24 yards to the Houston 44 with 24 seconds to play.

That was plenty of time for UCLA to rub a bit of salt in Houston’s wounds, McNown throwing a 46-yard touchdown pass to McElroy for a 45-3 halftime lead.

“When it’s 35-3 [actually 38-3] . . . that’s not running up the score when it’s 35 seconds to go,” Toledo said.

“I called that play. We wanted to see if we could make a big play and score before halftime . . . with 35 seconds left. After we scored, we felt in a position that we didn’t want to do anything to run up the score.

“Cade didn’t play the second half. Skip didn’t play the second half. [Mike] Grieb. McElroy. There are a lot of guys that didn’t play the second half. We must have played over 80 football players [the game report lists 69, all available save for redshirt candidates]. We had a lot of third-string guys playing, and we had walk-ons playing at the end.

“But if anybody thinks we were running up the score in that football game, they were sorely mistaken. That wasn’t my intent.”

Houston’s Vaughn Innis, the game’s leading rusher with 87 yards in 19 carries, agreed.

“They didn’t run it up,” he said. “It was over at halftime. They could have named the score, but they took the quarterback out.”

McNown was replaced by Drew Bennett, who completed three of four passes for 52 yards and a touchdown.

Michael Wiley continued the defensive feast, returning an interception for a 24-yard touchdown, and Jermaine Lewis ran right up the middle of the Houston defense for the game’s final points.

In all, 38 points came after the six turnovers. UCLA’s 24 turnovers have generated 117 points in five games.

The points are the talk of Texas.

“They outran us, outjumped us, outmuscled us. . . .” Helton said. “It was a bad horse to draw.”

It was a thoroughbred, one that has won three races in a row, including two runnings of the Lone Star Derby.