Sports

If all goes according to plan, Jerry Rice will be sporting powder blue at the Rose Bowl on Saturday. Oh, what’s that? Jerry Rice, Junior.

So the son of the all-time receiving great, a walk-on receiver, will make his NCAA debut against Cal as Rick Neuheisel — the man who once proclaimed the end of the Los Angeles football monopoly — tries to right his teetering ship.

If Cal fans are upset with Jeff Tedford, a look down south might ease some of the bitterness. UCLA has been forced to turn to its scout team just to put enough bodies on the field. That’s what happens when you lose control of your team, as Slick Rick did last Thursday: Six players — four of them receivers — venting their frustrations by brawling at Arizona after already falling into a 42-7 second-quarter hole on ESPN.

The suspensions aren’t the only thing hurting UCLA right now: senior safety Tony Dye, UCLA’s best defensive player, is lost for the season with a neck injury. If he doesn’t receive a medical redshirt, his career is over.

More surprising things have happened in the long history of college football than an upstart walk-on — Michigan State! — but the likely reality is that Junior has more name than game. The 5-foot-10, 182-pound walk-on has spent most of his time imitating opposing players for the Bruin defense, and it took a gutting of the receiving corps for him to get this far.

Granted, Rice’s work ethic is such that the sophomore is set to become one of the haves with a scholarship offer in the waiting next semester. A memorable mark on Saturday could be as good a sports story as any no-name player’s.

It would be the only good thing coming out of Westwood in 2011 — or any of the three seasons prior.

If you told someone today that Neuheisel reeled in three straight top-15 recruiting classes from 2008 to 2010, who would believe you? (How many bets could you win?) The Southland is one of the most fertile recruiting grounds on the West Coast: Colorado and Utah’s entry into the Pac-12 was contingent on them being able to play in Los Angeles every year as part of the South division.

Recruiting is an incredibly inexact science, as Mike Riley’s recent success at Oregon State will attest, so this alone is not a damning indication of the coach’s inability to develop talent. But when you put UCLA’s high marks here in context, you get a program that has stalled at the bottom of the Pac-12.

Through his first three seasons, all Neuheisel produced were a couple of deceptively meaningless wins: an EagleBank Bowl win over Temple in 2009, an upset over a worse-than-anyone-knew Texas in 2010. He has never finished above eighth in the conference.

That he has managed to hold on to his job for nearly four years is a minor miracle. Some argue that there is little to gain by firing a coach midseason, but with him, what is there to lose?

Slick Rick’s seat hasn’t suddenly burned up; it’s more of a pot that’s been boiling slowly for four years, and the football team is the frog inside. Athletic director Dan Guerrero’s decision not to pull the trigger simply delays the inevitable.

Tedford suggested that the Bruins could rally together after taking those heavy losses, but those words are about as believable as Neuheisel’s own insistence on his job security.

If the football monopoly in Los Angeles is over, it’s because there’s not much football going on at all.

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