Today’s a senior bowl for Bruins

Another senior moment awaits UCLA’s football team.

This one, though, will not make Athletic Director Dan Guerrero cringe or Coach Karl Dorrell gulp. Even Bruins fans can give their agenda-driven e-mail hobbies a rest -- keep him; fire him -- and actually cheer in unison.

Dorrell’s first senior class will trot onto the Rose Bowl field one last time to play Oregon today with a chance to reminisce and maybe even stoke the embers of long-shot hopes of earning an encore appearance at their home field on Jan. 1.

But as the 25 UCLA seniors come out of the tunnel, questions about their legacy will echo through the Arroyo Seco:

Can the Bruins defy logic and snag a share of the Pacific 10 Conference title? Will they at least win one of their last two games to become bowl eligible? Will Dorrell exit along with his first senior class?

“We have 25 seniors and this is the last time we will ever play at the Rose Bowl,” senior linebacker Christian Taylor said. “At this point, I really don’t care whether we get bowl-eligible or not. I want to go out on a good note at home on Senior Day.”

Blinders-on focus may be best at this point -- for both teams.

Pac-10 teams left the national stage when Arizona State lost to USC on Thursday. National title dreams are over and the fallback position is the Rose Bowl. Neither UCLA nor Oregon is currently billed as the front-runner for a Pasadena trip, even though the Ducks are currently front-running.

Ninth-ranked Oregon, 8-2 overall and 5-2 in the Pac-10, is the only team that controls its destiny. But with Heisman-hopeful quarterback Dennis Dixon out because of a season-ending knee injury, the Ducks are on the critical list.

Even Coach Mike Bellotti needed to remind everyone this week, “We’re playing for a BCS game. Not many teams are in that position.”

Brady Leaf will start in Dixon’s place. The last time a Leaf had a memorable moment at the Rose Bowl, it was his brother, Ryan, who nearly led Washington State to victory over Michigan in the Rose Bowl game. Brady Leaf has a chance to follow in family cleatsteps, though he will finish his senior season as a surrogate quarterback.

Bellotti’s sales pitch this week was, “What can we do to put a positive finish on [Dixon’s] season?”

As for UCLA (5-5, 4-3), it can count the positives on one hand at this point. The Bruins were considered out of the Rose Bowl race long ago and have lost three straight games. Yet they retain the edge in the four-way-tie scenario -- just beat Oregon today and USC next week and hope Arizona beats Arizona State.

“There is still a lot for us to play for,” Dorrell reiterated at his weekly news conference.

The Bruins seniors have their own motivation.

“I watched those seniors go out there for the last time when I was a freshman and ever since then I have wondered what that was going to be like for me,” senior defensive end Bruce Davis said. “It is definitely going to be emotional. This caps it off for 25 of us.”

The Bruins have reached a bowl game each season since these seniors arrived, though the history reads more like a budget airline flight itinerary -- to Las Vegas, to El Paso, to San Francisco. The crowning moment for this class was a 10-2 record in 2005 that landed the Bruins in the Sun Bowl.

This season was supposed to be different, though it slid into mediocrity soon enough. A loss to Utah and a forehead-slapping defeat to Notre Dame were followed by a rash of injuries that sank the Bruins in the conference standings.

“It’s tough when you realize where we expected to be right now,” Taylor said. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think we’d be 5-5. I thought we’d be 10-0 or 9-1 or 8-2.

“It hurts, and I’m a little angry and I’m a little bitter. That is something we’ll have to deal with at some point.”

But not today.

“It’s a good feeling because you’ve put in so much hard work throughout these four or five years that us seniors have been here,” senior cornerback Trey Brown said. “This is the last time to go out there and win. It would probably be better to get that ‘W’ ”

The Bruins have won their last two home-field finales for their seniors, including an upset of second-ranked USC last season.

“Life is not perfect and you’re not going to get what you want,” Taylor said. “But we can’t sit here and cry about it. This is our day. This is our moment.”

Or, as Davis put it, “There is one more thing we have to do. Ask me about Senior Day after the game.”

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chris.foster@latimes.com