For UCLA football, September will be a time for scheduled maintenance

What doesn’t kill your football team could make it a Rose Bowl contender.

Remember that, because UCLA faces a brutal schedule this season, with four difficult games at the start.

First up on Saturday is Kansas State, a solid program from a major conference; then comes a Pacific 10 Conference opener at home against Stanford, a league championship contender; then Houston, bringing one of the nation’s most prolific offenses to the Rose Bowl; followed by a visit to Texas, a perennial national championship contender.

Yet, the Bruins have survived such early-season tests before, recovering from an 0-3-1 start against a similar lineup of opponents — Georgia, Arizona State, Nebraska and Brigham Young — in 1983.

In fact, they flourished, going 7-4-1 and winning the Pac-10 that season, then routing Illinois in the Rose Bowl with a former walk-on quarterback being named the most valuable player.

So holster the hand-wringing, UCLA fans, and stow the tough-schedule cop-out. Expectations this season should be sky-high.

Just ask that former walk-on quarterback.

“The bottom line to that [1983] season, we were relentlessly positive,” UCLA Coach Rick Neuheisel said. “We found a way even when we were 0-3-1 to keep believing, keep fighting. All of sudden there was a crack we got through. We went up and beat Stanford and steamrolled from there.

“Hopefully, that will be exactly the case this year. I’m not hoping for 0-3-1, but I am hoping for that kind of conference run.”

So there sits the bar.

Alabama won the national title a year ago in Nick Saban’s third season as coach. There are also programs closer to home that have shown growth in their head coach’s third year.

California was 10-2 in Jeff Tedford’s third year, 2004, which included a 7-1 conference record that would have put the Bears in the Rose Bowl had Texas not suddenly vaulted up in the polls. Stanford was 8-5 and finished tied for second in the Pac-10 a year ago, the third season for Coach Jim Harbaugh, who already has two victories over USC.

Some UCLA fans might even remember that Karl Dorrell managed to carve out a 10-2 record in his third season, finishing third in the Pac-10 in 2005.

Neuheisel, in his third season at UCLA, has reached that show-me moment — but with a don’t-look-now schedule.

“That’s what we want,” tailback Johnathan Franklin said. “We walk around here saying we’re the best. It’s our time to prove we’re the best.”

And what does the program need to start showing?

“Championships,” Franklin said.

Those were way off in the distance during Neuheisel’s first two seasons, when the Bruins had consecutive eighth-place finishes with identical 3-6 records in Pac-10 play.

“Most of the starters have been here three years or more; it’s time to put it on the table,” cornerback Aaron Hester said.

Outsiders remain skeptical.

A media poll picked the Bruins to again finish eighth in the Pac-10 this season. “That’s really laughable,” UCLA safety Tony Dye said.

But coaches who vote in the USA Today poll didn’t show the Bruins much love, either. UCLA did not receive a point in the poll, which includes five Pac-10 voters.

“That’s fine,” Dye said. “We’ll be the underdogs.”

The lack of faith outside Westwood is at least partially rooted in a formidable September schedule.

Kansas State was a national power under Bill Snyder, who is in the second year of his second stint as coach. Texas, ranked No. 5 by the Associated Press and No. 4 by the coaches, has 10-gallon plans for another national title run. Houston will bring to town gunslinger quarterback Case Keenum, a Heisman Trophy candidate.

Mix in a Stanford team with quarterback Andrew Luck and 14 other returning starters for the Pac-10 opener Sept. 11 and the Bruins have work to do.

“People ask about the schedule all the time,” Neuheisel said. “But schedules are done years in advance. No one was trying to be cruel.”

Neuheisel navigated such a route as UCLA’s quarterback in 1983. Losses to top-ranked Nebraska, 20th-ranked Georgia and BYU, and a tie with Arizona State, left the Bruins with their second-worst start since 1944.

But things turned quickly after a 39-21 victory over Stanford, the first of five consecutive wins and seven in the last eight games, including the 45-9 Rose Bowl defeat of Illinois.

“Our team was coming off success,” Neuheisel said. “We had won the Rose Bowl the year before and there were a bunch of older guys who had waited for their opportunity, like me. We kind of found ourselves as the season went along.

“We weren’t necessarily a great team, but we were better than each team we played.”

A sequel is all Neuheisel asks to see this season.

“If you’re a player, you have to be excited about the schedule,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll allow it to be an excuse.”

chris.foster@latimes.com

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