Now & Then

Mother Nature is a Bruin.

UCLA gets a weather-delayed football game this week it didn’t really want to play and gladly acknowledges the error of its previous thinking, along with the realization that things could not have been planned this well.

Athletic Director Pete Dalis’ original decision that the Bruins would play at Miami on Dec. 5, out of a sense of obligation but against the wishes of some players and coaches, has come to be ingenious. The game was in many ways forced upon them once Dalis decided his team should make good on a schedule altered by Hurricane Georges just as he would want another school to honor a deal if an earthquake had hit Los Angeles. The decision has become the opportunity the Bruins could only have hoped for.

Once concerned about a long trip and how it would cut into school time with finals approaching, the Bruins instead now get some East Coast exposure for the poll voters.

Once concerned about extending the regular season by two weeks, the Bruins now get to play on ESPN the same day Tennessee and Kansas State will also be on TV, assuring UCLA will not be forgotten.

Once concerned about how Miami might become a drag on their strength of schedule, part of the bowl championship series calculations, the Bruins now get a boost with a 7-3 opponent enjoying its own successful season.

Of course, that also serves as a reminder that the Hurricanes are a dangerous matchup and that victory at the Orange Bowl is anything but a foregone conclusion. But in considering the implications of a victory--since the fallout of a loss is obvious, a berth in the Rose Bowl against Wisconsin--one thing has emerged as the Bruins and their 20-game winning streak prepare for the trip to South Florida.

They’re brilliant for allowing this Saturday to be forced upon them.

“We’re surprised,” said linebacker Ryan Nece, who all along wanted the game to be rescheduled because he has family in the area. “It’s really weird how things have fallen into place. But that’s the way this team has been all year.”

Guided by divine intervention as much as interceptions.

“I think it’s kind of worked out real well, to be honest with you,” Coach Bob Toledo said. “We’re still in the eyes of everybody. If we would have been finished up, we would have kind of been forgotten about a little bit. But now that we’re still playing and both the other teams are still playing, it’s like championship Saturday. Things worked out well.”

Imagine if Hurricane Georges had not appeared to be barreling down on Miami and they had played at the Orange Bowl on Sept. 26 as originally scheduled. The Hurricanes--the team, not the storm--had opened the season with victories over Eastern Tennessee and Cincinnati and were coming off a tough loss to Virginia Tech. If UCLA had come in and defeated them, badly or otherwise, it could have sent a young Miami team that had Florida State and West Virginia within the next three games in a tailspin and damaged the Bruins’ strength of schedule.

Better yet, imagine if the Bruins had decided on Oct. 5 not to reschedule the game. Their regular season would be done, but so could their chances at the ultimate goal, the national championship.

Miami had said almost from the start it wanted to play, thereby putting the pressure on the Bruins. To not play would make it appear that they were running scared from the game, or at the very least trying to dodge games to ensure their unbeaten record would remain intact. One media member who votes in the Associated Press poll said at the time he would have dropped UCLA to 20 or 25 on the spot, even if the AP took away his ballot. Others had a similar feeling.

The Bruins would have been hammered in the polls. They would have taken an image beating that would have lasted years.

“That’s hard to make that call,” said Toledo, today at No. 3 in both polls and No. 2 in the BCS rankings. “I’m not sure. I really don’t know. But you might be right.”

Said tight end Ryan Neufeld: “Even with the record we have now, I think Kansas State and Tennessee, let’s say they both win Saturday, they would go to the Fiesta Bowl and we definitely would not. It’s great that it’s worked out that we have this chance.

“I originally did not want to play the game. I didn’t know how much of a weight that had on the BCS and the polls, so we kind of had the mentality that if we made it undefeated, we didn’t want to risk going down there and possibly losing and having that affect our national championship. Now that it does matter in the BCS, we all definitely want to play the game.”

Said Nece: “It’s kind of weird how all three teams are playing the same day. I don’t know if that’s God’s plan, after throwing a hurricane in there. But now we’re all on the same day. It’s strange the way it’s worked out. But it’s really worked out in our favor.”

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Matchups

How UCLA and Miami matched up if they would have played on Sept. 26 and how they match up now.

Records & Ranking

2-0 (5th) UCLA, 10-0 (3rd), 2-1 (unrank.), Miami 7-3 (unrank).

Sept. 26. Now

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Saturday

UCLA at Miami, 11 a.m., ESPN