Haven’t the Bruins Been Here Before?

Nothing says Christmas quite like UCLA and Wyoming in the Las Vegas Bowl.

Top story line: ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz.

Yeah, and if UCLA hits the snooze button it’s cruisin’ for another Bruin bruisin’.

How many times have we seen this set up, the one where an overconfident/uninterested Pacific 10 Conference school treks halfheartedly into a second-banana bowl game and slips on the peel?

You’d think kids would learn after all these years, but they never do, probably because John Madden never put out a cautionary-tale video game based on the 1992 Freedom Bowl.

No matter how much the upper-hand coach counsels in no-win situations such as these, it’s tough to convince blue-chip players they’re not lining against cow chips.

How could anyone who attends UCLA on a football scholarship get worked up over a first-ever meeting against Wyoming?

Never mind both teams are 6-5 and boast in common a victory against San Diego State.

The reason UCLA has never played Wyoming is that it’s never supposed to, right?

Of course, this attitude adds up to a shake-and-bake recipe for disaster.

Let’s get into Bruin heads here: UCLA was set to play Notre Dame in the Insight Bowl until 10-1 California got broadsided by the bowl championship series standings and knocked out of the Rose Bowl and into the Holiday.

That put Arizona State in the Sun Bowl, sent Oregon State to the Insight and jettisoned UCLA to Lake Mead, suddenly having to give a Hoover Dam.

Now, UCLA versus Notre Dame could have raised a few pulse rates. Even Bruin players know Notre Dame used to have a famous football program.

Win one for the Dipper, right?

Going from Notre Dame to Wyoming is like going from the prospect of ice cream to beets.

You say Notre Dame hasn’t won a bowl game in a decade, what’s the big deal?

Shoot, Wyoming hasn’t won a postseason game since the Johnson administration (Lyndon, not Andrew).

We picture UCLA Coach Karl Dorrell going over the Wyoming game tape with his players:

Dorrell: OK, this is Wyoming’s coach, Joe Glenn.

Player: Wasn’t he the first guy to orbit the Earth?

Dorrell: That was John Glenn.

Glenn actually has Wyoming playing out of this world when you consider the Cowboys were picked to finish last in the Mountain West Conference this year.

In other words, any Bruin who overlooks Wyoming does so at his own peril.

Pac-10 history is chock full of these trap-door games since 1975, the first year the conference allowed member schools to play in any bowls other than the Rose.

Let’s review:

* 1992 Freedom Bowl: Fresno State 24, USC 7.

A coach could write a doctoral thesis on the repercussions of this folly.

Never mind Fresno State was actually pretty good and boasted a backfield that included future NFL quarterback Trent Dilfer and running back Lorenzo Neal.

USC, groomed to play bowl games in Pasadena, not Anaheim, could not have been less excited.

It was the game that cost USC coach Larry Smith his job.

“I’m not shocked,” Smith was quoted as saying after the game. “I’m never shocked in college football.”

Wrong answer.

Smith was supposed to say “USC is never supposed to lose to Fresno State, not in football, field hockey or tiddlywinks.”

Given the choice of quitting or being hauled into the desert on a milk wagon, Smith chose to submit his resignation.

* 1998 Sun Bowl: Texas Christian 28, USC 19.

This might have been the first clue Paul Hackett was a bad hire.

USC began the game with a respectable 8-4 record in Hackett’s first year and left El Paso in ruins after amassing minus-23 yards in rushing. It was TCU’s first bowl win since 1957 and the beginning of the end for Hackett.

He went 6-6 the next year, 5-7 in 2000 and, then, back to the NFL.

* 2001 Las Vegas Bowl: Utah 10, USC 6.

Remember that fleeting moment a few years back when it seemed that Pete Carroll might not be the answer for USC?

Carroll capped his first year at 6-6 with this stinker.

Somehow Carroll, the noted defensive genius, allowed the Utah tandem of Dameon Hunter and Adam Tate to combine for 197 rushing yards against the Trojan defense. That was Hunter and Tate, mind you, not Kiick and Csonka.

In hindsight, this loss jolted the USC program and spurned a renaissance that continues to this day.

* 2003 Silicon Valley Classic: Fresno State 17, UCLA 9.

Yep, Fresno again.

After this ugly, unimaginable, slop-fest last year, UCLA fans went kicking and screaming into the off-season, many demanding that first-year Coach Dorrell not return for his second.

UCLA totaled 164 yards on a soggy field, and quarterback Drew Olson completed only 11 of 31 passes for 96 yards.

The loss set UCLA football back months and all but assured another bumper-crop recruiting class for cross-town rival USC.

On a positive note, Dorrell could use footage of the game to prepare for this year’s Las Vegas bowl matchup against Wyoming.

“See those listless, lifeless, mud-soiled sad sacks losing a game they were supposed to win?” Dorrell could say.

“That’s us. And if we’re not careful, it could be us again.”