A BOUQUET OF QUESTIONS

Welcome to the colorless, odorless Rose Bowl.

Just don’t get run over by the kid who has been holding his helmet five years for one sniff.

Welcome to the overpriced, overvalued Rose Bowl.

Just don’t say anything to the kid who has paid about $70,000 to get in.

So you think UCLA doesn’t want to play in today’s game against Big Ten also-ran Wisconsin?

Meet Larry Clements, who, precisely as you read this, is praying that he will.

“Just one play,” he says. “Just one.”

So are his parents.

“We’re saying a Hail Mary,” said mother Judy.

So are his friends back in LaCrosse, Wis., where they will have their first and last chance to see the hometown hero play against the home-state team.

“Sam’s Bar, on the North Side, everybody is going to be there,” said high school buddy Josh Gates. “A lot of people in town scratched their heads when he went out to UCLA. They’ll all be watching now.”

He’s going to play. This 5-foot-9 senior defensive back is going to break through on a kickoff, and pummel the return man, and knock the ball loose, and pounce on the fumble, and be swarmed by teammates, and run to the sideline waving the precious leather at his family in the stands.

In his dreams.

“Sometimes I close my eyes, and have a flash, and think, ‘Man, that would be the greatest feeling in the world,’ ” Clements said. “I would like to have that feeling just once.”

He’s probably not going to play. He almost never plays. After joining the team as an unknown freshman walk-on from an unknown town, he sat the bench for three consecutive years.

He didn’t get into a game until last season, when he participated in six plays, all kickoffs. This year he has been in three plays, all kickoffs.

Nine plays, all of them on videotape in his parents’ den. They can punch them in and watch an entire five-year college career in 90 seconds.

“There are times when he would call home, kind of depressed, and say, ‘You know, I’m just a tackling dummy,’ ” said his mom.

And those times when he quit?

“Oh no,” said his mom. “He’s never quit. He’s never quit anything.”

Larry Clements has wide eyes, short dark hair, an adolescent face. He is a bit of hard block type in a world of glossy 8-by-10s, and circumstances have never allowed him to forget it.

Like the dozen or so other walk-ons who fill out the team’s roster and serve as, yes, tackling dummies for the regulars, he has never received one cent of athletic scholarship money.

The four hours of daily scout team abuse--twice that during preseason practice--is something he actually pays for with savings and loans.

“The first two years were the hardest,” he said. “Out-of-state tuition.”

When scholarship teammates eat at the team’s training table after practice, Larry Clements is back at his apartment trying to cook for himself.

When scholarship teammates travel around the Pac-10 for road games, he watches those games at home from his couch.

When he was forced to move out of his apartment once because the rent became too high, some teammates took him in, charged him nothing at first because they felt so sorry for him, still can’t believe he’s here.

“[If] I wasn’t on scholarship, there is no way I would be playing football,” said roommate Brendon Ayanbadejo. “The things Larry goes through, everybody admires him.”

Clements doesn’t even have his own number. He wears 26, a number also belonging to star running back DeShaun Foster.

The only way he gets anybody back home to believe he’s even on the team is to stand behind Coach Bob Toledo or quarterback Cade McNown during games on national television.

“We always know where to find him,” Gates said. “He knows where the camera is.”

Five years, nine plays.

And one more today would make it all worth it?

That may be hard for some to understand. But so, too, might be Larry Clements.

“When he left Wisconsin, lot of people said ‘You’ll never make it, you’ll get cut, you’ll be back,’ ” his mother said. “In a small way, this would show some of them.”

Truth be told, the only person Clements really wants to play for is his father.

After traveling around Wisconsin for years attending virtually all of his three-sport son’s youth and prep athletic events, Larry Clements Sr. has never seen his boy play college football.

He has flown out for one or two games a year, but his son has never gotten in.

In 1997, Larry’s mom and one of his three sisters attended the home game against Houston. His dad had to cancel his plane ticket at the last minute to tend to Larry’s ailing grandmother.

The Bruins blew out the Cougars early. Larry played. Four kickoffs.

In the stands, watching him play in a college game for the first time, his mother and sister openly wept.

Back in Wisconsin, where Larry excitedly phoned from a Rose Bowl phone immediately after the game, his father also wept.

For a different reason.

“I finally played, and he wasn’t there,” Larry said. “I could hear him sobbing.”

It was his father, who works in the offices of a steel company, who would take Larry to play basketball at a local seminary as a child.

It was his father who would remind Larry of the sign above the door.

Better to aim high and miss, then to aim low and hit.

It was this philosophy that Larry followed when, after being voted athlete of the year at his high school, he spurned a walk-on offer at Wisconsin and scholarship offers at several tiny schools to come to UCLA.

“A lot of people thought I was nuts, but I thought it would be a good test for me,” Larry said. “It was a good place academically, and I thought I would just go for it.”

So he aimed high. And yeah, five years later, some might say he missed.

But did he?

He will graduate this spring with a degree in history. He is hoping to enter the business world for a couple of years, then return to school to obtain his MBA.

He doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do. But he does know that whatever he does, it’s not going to scare him. It’s not going to be too hard. He will not quit.

“After what I’ve been through, I’ve learned so much,” he said. “Whatever happens to me now, I’m ready.”

Larry’s father will be in the stands today, with his mother, two sisters, a couple of family friends, 10 to 20 former high school teammates and buddies.

“Larry has to play,” his father said of the Rose Bowl game. “Just because, well . . . he has to.”

His parents gave him an idea earlier this week. They knew he might be offended, but they gave it to him anyway.

“We told him, ‘Tell Coach Toledo what’s going on,’ ” his mom said. “ ‘Tell him the situation. Tell him what this means to you. What do you have to lose?’ ”

Larry thought about it for a few days. By his reckoning, he has spoken to Toledo only four times in three years. He has never asked for anything.

“I’m kind of nervous about asking him,” he said earlier this week. “But I guess I should do it sometime.”

If he didn’t--and it sounded as though he might not--let us.

Coach Toledo? Fourth quarter, no matter what the score, can you let Larry Clements play?

Usually you don’t trust him with less than a two- or three-touchdown lead, but what the heck. It’s a kickoff. Nobody’s going to beat him deep. He’s not the biggest or fastest, but I guarantee, nobody’s going to run over him either.

One play. What’s it going to hurt? So he gets blocked into next week. So 10 other guys can take up the slack. You’ll survive.

Who knows, maybe he’ll even make the tackle--he has two assists, you know.

Maybe the whole thing will inspire you so much, you’ll hug him as he comes off the field, a hug they’ll feel all the way back at Sam’s in LaCrosse.

A hug for all of us.

Coach Toledo, if you promise to let Larry Clements play, then we can tell you a secret.

It really doesn’t matter.

“We’ll be waiting for him after the game no matter what,” his father said. “I’m going to say, ‘Son, I’m proud of you. I’m so proud of you.’ ”

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com