McCann’s Learning a Lot by Watching

It’s something new to Ryan McCann. He has always been the best quarterback on his team, and now he finds Cory Paus might be better, at least in the minds of those who dole out playing time at UCLA.

“We look at everything,” Bruin Coach Bob Toledo said Monday. “We’re not just looking at throwing the ball. We’re looking at calling plays, getting us out of plays [changing them at the line of scrimmage in response to defense]. And we’re looking at not getting us beat . . . [interceptions], fumbled snaps, things like that.

“And we’re giving them the same reps: the same offenses against the same defensive situations, so it’s even.”

Coaches see almost everything, and what they miss first-hand, the camera picks up for later viewing. Passes are charted. Everything is under scrutiny.

It could be nerve-racking. Every incomplete pass could be a harbinger of a season spent on the sideline.

“If you do that, though, it would get to you,” said McCann, who came to UCLA from Agoura High with the usual idea of waiting his turn behind Cade McNown, then stepping into the lineup for four seasons.

Then he saw how rapidly competition changes in college football.

“I watch [Paus] and see what he does, but I can’t allow myself to think, ‘He completed that pass, now I have to complete this one.’ I watch, [visualizing] myself as quarterback and that gives me an advantage of more reps.”

Paus has an advantage because he started seven games last season, and the consensus opinion is that it’s his job to lose.

McCann, who played in the final four games and started against USC last season, looks at it as it’s his job to win.

Toledo just looks at it as a decision that has to be made and quickly, so as to get on to other things. No coach likes to begin a fall training camp undecided about his quarterback, but he also remembers last season, when inexperience and injuries at quarterback were among the reasons for a 4-7 record.

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Toledo said that left guard Oscar Cabrera was doubtful for the season opener Sept. 2 against Alabama because of a high ankle sprain. Cabrera had been called day-to-day when he suffered the injury Saturday.

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Alabama has sold more than 16,000 tickets for its opener against the Bruins at the Rose Bowl, and it could be the largest opponents’ crowd to play against UCLA--discounting the Rose Bowl game--in history.

Pete Dalis, UCLA’s athletic director, searched his memory and said Monday he believed the previous largest was about 12,000, brought by Nebraska in the 1980s.