UCLA Has Slipped

Ran to my computer Sunday afternoon. Jumped from the couch in the middle of a pass from Brett Favre, landed on the Net.

Forget the action, I needed the numbers.

Where was UCLA ranked in the newest writers’ and coaches’ football polls? Did they drop like that genius’ fumble on the goal line? Or did they amazingly emerge from their 17th consecutive victory as, uh, winners?

Ran to the radio Monday afternoon, scanned the talk stations--forget political election--looking for information on a different sort of balloting.

Where did UCLA rank in the newest bowl championship series poll? Did it improve its first-place time of 3.04? Or is that a grade-point average?

Whatever it is, however it works, I wanted to know, needed to know . . . did everybody still like our Bruins?

Finally threw up my hands, exhausted from worrying about games that are not games and scores that are not scores.

Suggest that 60 distracted guys in that UCLA locker room do the same.

On closer inspection--meaning, I’m actually looking something up instead of making it up--history and the schedule give UCLA the convenience of ignoring all the bits and bytes of these midseason popularity contests.

I guarantee that if the Bruins simply do what is expected of them--win their remaining four regular-season games--they will be playing Jan. 4 in the Fiesta Bowl for the national championship.

It doesn’t matter where they are ranked now, or next week, or any time before they finish that regular-season schedule.

If they keep winning, I guarantee they will have a chance to play for the whole taco chip.

If this does not happen, I will come to work in a clown suit.

Unlike that wimp down the street, I will not hide it in a grocery bag.

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Who is Jeff Sagarin? Is this the guy who hosted “America’s Funniest Home Videos”?

If a national college football championship could be decided with a poll based partially on one person’s computer rankings, shouldn’t that person be, like, Bill Gates?

The same with the New York Times and Seattle Times. Great towns, fine newspapers, but why do their computers spit out national championships while my computer at the L.A. Times doesn’t do anything fancier than scroll down?

Monday’s BCS poll, which combines those computer rankings with the routinely unfair writers’ and coaches’ polls and strength of schedules, has dropped UCLA to third.

For which the Bruins should be thankful.

Maybe now, they’ll stop thinking about being a No. 1 team and start playing like one.

Bob Toledo’s sentiments exactly.

“I think it has distracted them; it’s hard not to distract them, they’re human,” Toledo said Monday of his team’s worries about the poll. “All of a sudden, we’re ranked No. 1 . . . but people are thinking we’re better than we are.”

So on Saturday, they nearly lose to Stanford. And everyone in the country, after admiring the Bruins as a sort of gritty Steve Young, starts treating them like Kerry Collins.

Suddenly, with two other undefeated teams ahead of them, everyone in Westwood is fretting that the Bruins will suffer the same fate as the college team once led by Collins.

Penn State, 1994, 12 wins, zero losses, zero national championship. Enough to drive a man to drink?

Not to worry. Can’t happen here. One difference. One name.

Miami.

The Bruins can wallop Oregon State, survive Washington, defeat USC (or will they?) and remain stable in the rankings if Ohio State and Tennessee also keep winning, which they should.

Then on Dec. 5, it all changes.

“The bowl championship series weekend,” Toledo calls it.

On that Saturday, UCLA has a chance that the star-crossed 1994 Nittany Lions never had.

It will fly solo on national TV against a nationally ranked opponent.

In the afternoon on the East Coast, UCLA will play Miami just hours before Tennessee is expected to play Arkansas in the Southeastern Conference championship game.

The Hurricanes could be 8-2. The Razorbacks will have been exposed as fraudulent by then, and could have as many as three losses.

UCLA looks as good beating Miami as Tennessee looks in beating Arkansas, and that will be that.

It will be the Bruins who will face Ohio State for the national title, although any guarantees stop there.

(A note to the Rose Bowl folks: You are surely too classy to complain about losing a national championship matchup. After all, in the past four years, your refusal to join the bowl alliance cost three good teams--Penn State, Arizona State, Michigan--a chance to play in that national championship game elsewhere.)

The path for UCLA toward a national title is still there. The trick now is sticking to it.

Cade McNown, his Heisman Trophy distractions having been eliminated last week in Nebraska by Ricky Williams, is intent on making sure they do.

“We have to forget what everybody else is saying about us . . . forget about all that other stuff,” McNown said. “We just have to think about playing football.”

McNown referred to the final four games as “a new season.”

He said he wants to use this new season to rediscover the magic of last season, when the Bruins stunned the country with 10 consecutive wins, each of them filled with the daring, delightful moves that only an underdog can make.

Finally, two months into a season that features a better record but probably less fun, the Bruins are those underdogs again.

“Sometimes this team has been more concerned with not losing, than with winning,” McNown said. “We have to just play our best and let the chips fall where they may.”

For now, there is still plenty of room in their laps.