Bruin Season Seemed Magical, but Really It Was an Illusion

Most of us were fooled until about the Oregon State game. Sure, teams were scoring a lot on UCLA, but our visions of the Bruin football team were mostly sugar plums of touchdown passes by the wonderfully talented Cade McNown.

All along, we were blocking out the real visions that, in the sad and exasperating end, keynoted this team:

* Defensive back Marques Anderson going for a tackle, grabbing air and watching the running back keep going for a touchdown. (It happened Friday in the Rose Bowl).

* Linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo doing a celebration dance after a big hit on a 198-pound sophomore ball carrier, then being run over like a squirrel on the 405 Freeway by the big-gun star running back. (It happened Friday in the Rose Bowl).

* Linebacker Ryan Nece, chasing the big-gun star running back in the open field, with the angle, and never catching him, despite weighing exactly 50 pounds less.

McNown kept coming to the rescue, kept making us forget that things other than hockey goalies can be labeled “sieves.” He overwhelmed Arizona with so much offense and 52 points that the Wildcats’ 28 points were an afterthought. Then Oregon got 38 the next week, but McNown found a way to get 41.

Then there was the Miracle in Corvallis--as if a team talking about a national championship should ever need a miracle there--when his last-second fling to Brad Melsby left us thinking that, while the amount of offense generated by a walk-on kid from Glendora High named Johnathan Smith was troubling, McNown always would figure out a way at the end.

Also, it was always good to recall the moments that the defense did contribute: Anderson knocking the ball loose two yards before Stanford, of all teams, pulled off the upset of the year; and the two goal-line stands against California. Yes, another sign we ignored. Goal-line stands against Cal!

After Oregon State, neither Washington nor USC turned out to be much; further evidence of that came just recently when the Huskies’ Jim Lambright was fired and the Trojans actually lost to Texas Christian in the Sun Bowl, proving that there may not be life after Fresno State, after all.

So we all looked toward the season-ender with Miami with illusions of national championship grandeur. And then along came the Hurricanes’ Edgerrin James, who might just as well have been Red Grange. James rushed for 299 yards and his team gained a total of 689--no, that is not a typographical error--and suddenly, we slapped our forehead with the palm of our hand and understood.

McNown had fooled us all along. He had overcome the other teams, and his own defense, in carrying this not-quite-ready-for-prime-time bunch into a position for all of us to wave our index fingers in the air and believe it.

To think how close it had been.

Had the official ruled that Melsby was down, rather than fumbling late in the Miami game, McNown certainly would have hung on one more time and we’d all be munching Tostitos and shopping in Scottsdale right now.

Instead, we learned. And then, here Friday in a Rose Bowl game that attracted 93,872 and brought us more shades of the color red than we thought existed, we learned again.

Holy Nick Aliotti, did we learn.

The beleaguered Bruin defensive coordinator, who obviously had even fewer bullets in his gun than any of us imagined, squirmed along the sidelines as the rest of us watched from afar the final dismantling of a defense, and a season.

Ron Dayne, the 252-pound Badger running back, looked like the incarnation of Jim Thorpe, or maybe Carl Lewis. His 246 yards was one short of a game record, and his four rushing touchdowns tied a game record. Most of the game, he looked like a whale coming up out of the water in one of those Discovery Channel specials, with dozens of little fish attached to its back.

While the Bruin defense--admittedly starting two line players for the first time and losing starting free safety Larry Atkins because of a sprained knee--failed to pursue, failed to strip blockers in front of ballcarriers, failed to wrap arms around legs, the harsh reality became harsher. This was not a national-championship-contending team. It was half a national-championship-contending team.

The symbolic moment for the Bruin defense came in the second period, when Wisconsin completed a pass over the middle to its tight end, who lumbered along as one Bruin after another climbed on board. After he dragged a swarm of seven on his back for about five yards, the clincher came along, an eighth Bruin. He climbed on and finally made the Badger tumble, but grabbed his face mask in the process, costing UCLA penalty yardage on top of everything else.

At that moment, Aliotti was seen along the sidelines, looking toward the heavens. Chances are, his thoughts were not divine.

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Running It Up

The top 10 rushing performances against UCLA:

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Opponent, Team Car.-Yds. (Year) Edgerrin James, Miami 39-299 (1998) Jon Vaughn, Michigan 32-288 (1990) Ron Dayne, Wisconsin 27-246 (1999) Napoleon Kaufman, Wash. 34-227 (1994) Marcus Allen, USC 40-219 (1981) Mike Garrett, USC 40-210 (1965) David Eldridge, Arizona 20-205 (1989) O.J. Simpson, USC 40-205 (1968) Anthony Davis, USC 31-195 (1974) Charles White, USC 35-194 (1979)

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