Bennett Knows His Role

It’s an appellation that is really a qualifier when it precedes his name: redshirt freshman walk-on, as though to say, “Don’t expect much from No. 2 UCLA quarterback Drew Bennett.”

He wants a scholarship, sure, as much as anything for the stature it connotes, but he’ll forever be a walk-on, in the present or past, and Bennett can deal with that too.

“I’m comfortable,” he said. “I didn’t expect to be this far along. I want to play, but I understand what we’re doing here.”

He’s the backup to two-year starter Cade McNown, who is a junior and who is often referred to as an excellent athlete. But Bennett is a better one, faster at 4.7 seconds for 40 yards, and bigger at 6 feet 5, 201 pounds. And he’s an all-around athlete, with a vertical leap of 35 inches that enables him to dunk a basketball with both hands.

For a lark, on March 1, the day before the race, he and some friends decided they would run in the L.A. Marathon. He finished in a pedestrian six hours with no distance training whatever, then celebrated by going back to Westwood and scoring in double figures in an intramural basketball game.

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Present at some recent practices and at Wednesday’s Rose Bowl scrimmage has been Freddie Mitchell, a receiver from Lakeland, Fla., who failed to qualify academically for a UCLA scholarship, but who says he still wants to attend the school. Mitchell says he will take the Scholastic Assessment Test for a fourth time in October in hopes of achieving the 820 score he needs for a scholarship. He said he would like to enroll at UCLA in January.

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The Bruins will take walk-on senior kicker Bach Stabile on the road to back up Chris Sailer, saving a year of eligibility for freshman Zak Haselmo. . . . Receiver Brad Melsby, first believed to have stomach flu, has gone home while doctors seek the reason he nearly fainted in two practices.