The number 17 is not the over-under for Saturday’s Foster Farms Bowl between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the UCLA Bruins in Santa Clara, California.
The number 17 isn’t the spread by which UCLA is favored against its 5-7 bowl opponent from the Heartland.
Could it be the number of thousands of people which will attend this game? Who knows?
There are two reasons why the number 17 figures so prominently in this bowl matchup, one which is simultaneously sexy due to the schools involved, yet decidedly diminished due to the circumstances in which this tussle will unfold.
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UCLA and Nebraska have achieved richly on the gridiron over the years. Nebraska is the far more accomplished program on a larger historical level, but UCLA’s feats in the second half of the 20th century were nothing to sneeze at. From the 1940s through the 1990s, UCLA made the Rose Bowl at least once per decade, reaching the Granddaddy at least twice in each of those decades except for the 1970s. The Bruins finished unbeaten in 1954, sharing the national title with Ohio State. The Bruins finished in the top six for four straight seasons under coach Red Sanders.
UCLA has rarely matched the consistent excellence of USC when the Trojans have reached a supreme height, but the Bruins have authored two of college football’s most memorable upsets in the Rose Bowl: in 1966 against previously unbeaten Michigan State, and in 1976 against Woody Hayes’s last Big Ten championship team at Ohio State. Tommy Prothro (1966) and Dick Vermeil (1976) gave UCLA the head-coaching heft it needed to win those Rose Bowls. Pepper Rodgers, no slouch himself, coached UCLA to two top-15 finishes in 1972 and 1973.
Then came the program’s best 12-year run ever, under head coach Terry Donahue.
From 1982 through 1993, the Bruins reached four Rose Bowls, winning three, and claimed a Cotton Bowl championship when that bowl still meant something (before its just-ended period of comparative irrelevance, which began in the 1996 season). At a time in college football history when no more than 18 bowls existed in a given season, UCLA reached eight straight bowl games from 1981 through 1988.
In the last quarter of the 20th century, UCLA was a major factor in college football, something much more than a merely peripheral presence. Fans in the Western United States known this, but it residents of other regions might not be aware of the imprint UCLA has left on this sport.
Nebraska is the program which needs little (if any) historical retracing of its resume and legacy. Year after year after year, either Nebraska or Oklahoma won the Big Eight and went to the Orange Bowl. When Nebraska didn’t go to Miami for New Year’s Day, it frequently found a home in the Cotton, Fiesta or Sugar Bowls under Tom Osborne. In the 1990s, Nebraska won three national championships in four years, one of the sport’s greatest dynastic runs. Nebraska is part of college football royalty. UCLA — through the 20th century — was a member of the upper middle class, in a very comfortable suburban community with low crime rates and enlightened local governance.
As these programs make their way to the San Francisco Bay Area for a not-so-traditional bowl game on the day after Christmas, the luster of these programs has clearly faded.
The number 17 helps explain the decline of both the Bruins and Big Red.
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UCLA and Nebraska have met 12 times, a relatively small number over the larger sweep of college football history. The first meetings, in 1946 and 1948, occurred in the midst of a down period for Nebraska, well before Bob Devaney brought the program to prominence in the 1960s. The next time the two schools met in 1972, UCLA and Nebraska combined for at least 17 wins in the season when they played.
In every subsequent reunion following that 1972 get-together, UCLA and Nebraska have maintained that “17” streak. On some occasions, Nebraska carried the workload, but in several other instances, UCLA was just as good as the Huskers if not better. Through two meetings in the 1970s; four in the 1980s; two in the 1990s; and two more in this current decade, the Bruins and Big Red finished their seasons with at least 17 combined victories.
This Saturday, that streak ends. UCLA owns eight wins, Nebraska only five. An unlucky 13 reflects a low point in Lincoln, and in the age of the 12-game regular season (which did not exist on a regular basis in the 20th century), UCLA’s 8-4 mark represents more of a missed opportunity than an embodiment of quality. The Bruins had mastered USC over the past few years, but a limp second-half performance in a 40-21 defeat a month ago underscored the reality that in modern times, UCLA has lost the closer’s instinct it once had under Donahue and, a generation earlier, under Red Sanders.
These programs are searching for renewed glory, but yet again, the number 17 powerfully shows how elusive that glory has been.
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The consistency Nebraska and UCLA once possessed is demonstrated by the performances of both schools in the years when they faced each other.
In 1973, both schools won nine games, even as Nebraska defeated UCLA during the season. In 1983 and 1993, the Huskers made the Orange Bowl while beating the Bruins along the way. However, UCLA was able to overcome those losses to Big Red in both cases — under Donahue, the wonderboys from Westwood reached the Rose Bowl, 10 years apart. They defeated Illinois in the 1984 Rose Bowl (shown in our cover photo, above) and lost to Wisconsin in the 1994 Rose Bowl, the year when Barry Alvarez led the Badgers back to the big time… and a future NFL offensive coordinator named Darrell Bevell quarterbacked UW to one of its sweetest victories ever.
However, the machine-cranked quality of the Huskers and Bruins — something you could so reliably depend on in the olden days, especially the 1980s — no longer exists.
The number 17 tells the tale.
The 2015 campaign marks the 17th season since UCLA’s last conference championship, its Pac-10 title season in 1998. The Bruins lost to Miami in the final (rescheduled) game of the 1998 regular season, and even though a football program is not an actual person, it is as though UCLA absorbed a psychic wound from which it has never really recovered.
When the 2016 season begins in Lincoln, Nebraska football will play the 17th season since its last conference championship, won under Frank Solich in 1999. Given all the turmoil which crashed down upon new coach Mike Riley this year, it would be a miracle if Nebraska can elevate itself to the level currently attained by Ohio State, Michigan State, and Michigan. The Huskers are almost certain to reach a 17-year conference title drought, the one UCLA arrived at this season.
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17 combined wins in seasons when the two schools meet — that streak is over.
17 years without conference titles for both programs — that streak has arrived for UCLA, and it is one year away from applying to Nebraska as well.
Neither school has won a conference championship this century.
If there’s such a thing as Sweet 16, the number 17 has become very sour for these two accomplished college football programs.
