Column: UCLA’s Josh Rosen is just another college kid, right?

It’s a basic opening question, an icebreaker, an easy way to begin a conversation.

“So, you having fun?’’ the veteran columnist asks the kid quarterback.

The answer is almost always the same: a sigh, a nod, an explanation of how football is always fun, a simple cliche.

Except on a bright Tuesday morning in Westwood it becomes pretty clear, pretty quick, that Josh Rosen doesn’t do simple, and he doesn’t do cliche.

“Fun?’’ he asks, pausing. “On or off the field?’’

Then he laughs, because his question is actually an answer, one that carries far beyond the notion of fun and evolves into the far more compelling idea that UCLA’s leader will not be willingly confined, contained, or turned into yet another helmeted caricature.

“It’s not that I’m trying to be me,’’ he says. “It’s that I’m not trying to be somebody else.’’

Josh Rosen is 19 years old, and possibly the most talented college quarterback in the country, and maybe everyone needs to take a deep breath and realize the two things are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, he does stuff like fill an inflatable hot tub with a beer funnel in his dorm room, and profanely insult a presidential candidate with words on a baseball cap, and rip the entire college football system in a single tweet.

Yes, he is self-assured, he swears enough that some of his words were replaced with hyphens in a national magazine story, he challenges coaches, he questions systems, he sometimes acts every bit like an immature rich kid from Manhattan Beach.

“People that don’t know me don’t like me,’’ he says. “But people that know me, they really like me.’’

Yes, he was focused enough on the field last year to complete 60% of his passes for 3,668 yards and 23 touchdowns as a freshman. He has since grown stronger, and is fitting nicely into the Bruins’ new pro-style offense, and could sneak into this year’s Heisman race. He is considered a great teammate, a willing pupil, a trusted leader, and with a UCLA schedule that doesn’t include Oregon or Washington, he could even lead the Bruins into the College Football Playoff.

At which point, his media day news conference would no doubt result in a record number of raised eyebrows, dropped jaws and, ultimately, admiration for someone unafraid to remind folks that college football is played by, well, um, college students.

“We’re all college kids,’ he says. “I’m just not trying to hide it.’’

This spark was somewhat muted last season when, in deference to his age and inexperience, the Bruins made him available for interviews only after games.

That didn’t stop him from breaking the monotony of the season by posing for a photo with a woman while sitting in a dorm-room hot tub, which was removed at the school’s command and resulted in Rosen writing an apology paper. Then, this spring, he played a round of golf at Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes while wearing a cap adorned with, “F--- Trump.’’ Later, he responded to UCLA’s $280-million deal with Under Armour by sending out a tweet that read, “We’re still amateurs, though….Gotta love non-profits.”

These sorts of things led Coach Jim Mora to ask him, in a question recounted on “The Rich Eisen Show,” “Who do you want to be? Johnny Manziel or Tom Brady?’’ But to Mora’s credit, he has let Rosen be himself, allowing him to conduct uncensored interviews and speak his mind and learn from his mistakes.

“He’s not a robot,’’ Mora says. “UCLA has a long history of socially conscious student-athletes; this is a time of growth and discovery in their lives, and we’re going to let them grow and discover.

“I’ll let him know there could be long-term consequences for his actions, real or imagined, and I’ll give him a word or two, but I’m not going to squelch him.’’

One of those consequences includes worry from an NFL establishment that prefers robots, but if Rosen keeps growing and improving to where he reaches his No. 1-overall-pick potential, his mouth won’t matter. The other consequence is in embarrassing his family and school, but so far he’s been guilty of little more than being just another over-sized teenager who, because of his athletic prowess, has growing pains that are public.

“I’ve never been in trouble with the law, never been in trouble with anything like that,’’ Rosen says. “But I’m also not going to put out that perfect image, because I’m going to change and evolve, and everyone is going to see the process.”

So he says what he feels, shows who he is, and learns on the fly. Agree with him or not, in an era of the sterile Southland quarterback, how refreshing is that?

Colin Kaepernick not standing for the national anthem? Sure, he’ll comment on that:

“He made the same mistake I made with the Trump hat,’’ Rosen says. “I support [Kaepernick’s] intention, but I don’t support his action. Only really ignorant people are disagreeing with him, but people have an issue with the way he executed it.. It was done in a very inefficient and insulting way.’’

UCLA always has to fight its way out of this town’s football shadows, even this fall when the Bruins are one of the Pac-12 Conference favorites. So, bring it on.

“I’m not going to talk about a specific team, but nationally there are certain teams where you literally have to lose for 15 years straight in order for people be like, ‘OK, dynasty is over,’’’ he says. “Here at UCLA we get publicity when we’re good, we won’t get it when we’re bad. We were bad last year, that’s why we’re not getting the publicity that a historic team like USC is getting.”

All of this will be become just background noise, of course, if Rosen and UCLA don’t have success beginning Saturday in the opener at Texas A&M.

“I mean, they’re as good as a lot of teams we’ve played,’’ Rosen says, later adding, “We think there are a few chinks in their armor on defense that we’re going to be able to exploit.”

And the fun continues.

bill.plaschke@latimes.com

Twitter: @BillPlaschke