The UCLA Bruins are not likely to win the Pac-12 South. The California Golden Bears will have to thread the needle — part of which means beating Stanford — in order to win the Pac-12 North.
The two teams which will play in the Rose Bowl stadium on Thursday night should not be expected to play in the Rose Bowl game over two months later in the Arroyo Seco. However, the absence of championship stakes does not make this game a minor one in the larger scheme of things.
You might say that winning this contest doesn’t mean everything for Cal or UCLA, and on that point, you might have a case to make. However, the fullness of a game’s magnitude is captured not by merely expressing what it means to the winner, but by noting how much it would hurt the loser.
It’s this half of the win-loss equation which makes Cal-UCLA a very significant night fight on Thursday in Pasadena.
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Sure, a Cal win would merely mean that the Bears would live to fight another day in the Pac-12 North. With games against USC, Oregon and Stanford all looming, a victory over UCLA would not clinch or seal any tangible achievement beyond a single night’s conquest.
As for UCLA, a win would not transform the Bruins’ season or vastly improve the team’s odds of winning the Pac-12 South. UCLA, should it win here, would root hard for USC (yep, the Bruins would have no choice) on Saturday against Utah. Only a loss by the Utes can propel the Bruins into the Pac-12 South title chase at this point.
Winning will not mean that Cal or UCLA have arrived, that they’ve risen to a higher plateau in the Pac-12 this season.
It’s in the darkness of losing where this game’s true magnitude is found.
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California played Utah on relatively even terms — in Salt Lake City, no less — despite five interceptions from quarterback Jared Goff. That the Golden Bears still had a chance to win that game in the final minutes rated as a minor miracle. California is not just the sleek and attractive exterior of the Sonny Dykes offensive system; it’s a team which has developed more of a spine. Yes, the Golden Bears needed a missed extra point to win in Texas, and yes, the Longhorns are not what they once were, but the 2014 Cal team doesn’t win that game. The 2015 group managed to get the job done, even though it received a gentle forward nudge at the end.
A building process is taking place in Berkeley, and so while the Golden Bears can’t expect the world this season, they need to top Oregon for second place in the Pac-12. Such an achievement would give Dykes and his staff the ability to sell the program and its improved facilities. Jeff Tedford recruited at a very high level in Strawberry Canyon, and he certainly took the Bears very close to the Promised Land, but he never quite got there. If Cal can clearly surpass Oregon this season, Berkeley could become more of a destination program, joining archrival Stanford as a Bay Area school worth taking seriously.
A loss to UCLA would thwart these aspirations and make the uphill climb a lot more difficult for Cal — this year, next year, and in the long run. A division championship is within Cal’s reach, but the bigger goal is to enter November with each game meaning as much as it can mean, even if the results don’t emerge. A loss now would put Cal in danger of becoming an 8-4 or 7-5 team. If that’s all this season can produce, the Golden Bears will look upon the campaign as a wasted opportunity to change their reputation and standing in the theater of West Coast football.
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For UCLA, the pressure associated not with the need to win, but with the imperative to avoid losing, is far greater than it is in Berkeley.
Year after year, USC struggles under Pete Carroll’s successors. The Trojans will soon hire their third permanent head coach in the post-Carroll era, very likely meaning that their 2016 season will not be all that it can be. The transitional component of the 2016 campaign will probably affect USC at some point in that particular journey.
Yet, what if USC nails this upcoming hire and brings in The Next Great Trojan Coach? What if USC finds the ideal leader for its program, someone with considerable expertise on one side of the ball who hires the right coordinator on the other side of the ball? UCLA is working against the clock. The Bruins have held the upper hand in Los Angeles the past few years, yet all they have to show for it is one Pac-12 South title and no league championships during that time. The more this program muddles along, the harder it is (and will be) for Jim Mora to sell UCLA to recruits. If USC should reawaken, the difficulty of Mora’s job in Westwood will exponentially increase.
To win hearts and shape perceptions, UCLA can’t fall to a 7-5 record this season. Yet, with Utah on the schedule (in Salt Lake City), a loss here to Cal would put the Bruins in danger of falling into that pit.
Like Cal, UCLA knows that an 8-4 or 7-5 season would represent a waste of everyone’s time. The Bruins used to be a program which brought home the bacon in the 1970s, ’80s, and early ’90s, something California certainly can’t claim. Yet, when you’ve struggled for 17 years in L.A. as the Bruins have, it feels a lot more like the 57 years separating Cal from its last Rose Bowl game.
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California and UCLA — they’re not competing for championships at the moment, but they’re playing for the right to be seen as something more than ordinary. In the image-conscious Golden State, that counts for something. Avoiding a descent into the ranks of the forgotten counts for something more.
