UCLA Is No Match For Hurts And Oklahoma...But What If No One Is?

PASADENA--Some of the finest college football players this town has seen (lately) stood before adoring worshipers at the end of a wipe-out win at the venerable Rose Bowl.

“Our fans, wow,” Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley said after his team’s 48-14 win over UCLA.

Oklahoma followers occupied empty seats like seat fillers at the Oscars, and Riley said “our guys noticed it.”

With USC losing at Brigham Young on Saturday and most of the Pac 12 reeling, I figured the best chance of seeing a playoff-caliber team was to check out the Oklahoma Sooners.

Bingo. What an operation, what a coach, what an athletic director, what a quarterback, what a fight song, what a band, what a spirit squad!

Joe Castiglione, the fine Oklahoma athletic director who should be considered as the next AD at USC (but probably won’t), watched the game in a thousand-dollar suit and a fedora that only could have looked better if he was holding an umbrella drink.

I’ve known Joe for years and told him after the game to call me if he wanted any Los Angeles area real estate tips, or to meet a Kardashian.

Joe C laughed but couldn’t really commit to USC right then and there because Riley, one of the best young coaches in America, was giving a press conference 10 feet away.

And I’ll tell you another thing Oklahoma people have noticed on this trip: our gas prices.

Seeing Oklahoma up close must be what UCLA fans thought they should be close to seeing by now from Chip Kelly.

Instead they saw Kelly’s Bruins get out-played and out-coached on their way to an 0-3 start in 2019 (after a 3-9 finish in 2018).

After the whupping, Kelly ran bee-line straight out to shake Riley’s hand before he ran even faster into the UCLA exit tunnel.

Back to Oklahoma: what a pleasure and thrill it was to see a well-coached team deliver the kind of entertainment L.A. fans expect and deserve.

But this isn’t like the pros, where you can hope the Brooklyn Dodgers or Minneapolis Lakers move West.

We can’t clear out an immigrant ravine to entice Oklahoma to leave Norman.

Our only chance to see top-notched college football is to hope our locals schedule a home-and-home with a legacy program.

Oklahoma didn’t disappoint, although we hesitate to jump to the kind of conclusions some jumped to with USC freshman quarterback Kedon Slovis.

Saturday at the Rose Bowl was not the night to anoint Jalen Hurts with this year’s Heisman Trophy.

It is too early to say whether Hurts might become the third straight Oklahoma quarterback to win the award.

But it was tempting…

Hurts looked as good as a college player can look--becoming the first Sooner to ever rush for 100 yards in the first quarter—but we’re honestly going to have to see him against better competition.

Consecutive wins over South Dakota and Wayward Westwood are, frankly, not going to cut it.

Hurts, against UCLA, must have felt like he was back at Alabama, playing against a hyphen school. Two years ago, in fact, with Hurts at quarterback, Alabama defeated Mercer, 56-0.

That was the Tide’s 73rd straight win over an unranked opponent. (UCLA was an unranked opponent). Alabama led Mercer, 35-0, at the half. (Saturday, Oklahoma’s halftime lead over UCLA was 34-7.)

Mercer’s nickname: Bears

UCLA’s nickname: Bruins.

Hurts completed all seven pass attempts against Mercer for 180 yards with three touchdowns. He rushed twice for 30 yards.

Hurts, of course, led Alabama to the 2017 championship game before getting yanked at halftime and then being forced to watch Tua Tagovailoa lead the Tide to a dramatic overtime win over Georgia.

That must have been galling and humbling for Hurts to endure. Then he sat behind Tua all of last year before grad-transferring to Oklahoma.

Hurts has been mostly spectacular in three wins as a Sooner but he’s seen too much go haywire to get excited about anything.

He talked after Saturday’s game about being on top at Alabama and then getting demoted to nobody by a coaching decision.

“Some stuff doesn’t bother you, when you’ve been knocked off the throne,” Hurts said.

The only reason for benching him at half against UCLA would have been to rest him up for Big 12 Conference play.

Hurts, on a 90-degree night in Los Angeles, had 141 rushing yards at the half, while passing for 206 yards and two touchdowns.

He finished with 150 rushing yards (one touchdown) and 289 passing yards and three touchdowns.

Hurts isn’t buying any of it. He got benched at Alabama for having a so-so first half against Georgia.

“I’m never going to be satisfied,” Hurts said. “Ever.”

That’s good because Riley only evaluated Hurt’s performance as “pretty good.”

In fact, UCLA coach Chip Kelly was much more effusive in praise of Hurts.

"He’s as good as I’ve ever had the opportunity to coach against," Kelly said. "I’d put Jalen Hurts and Kyler Murray, who we’d played against last year, and Andrew Luck as the three quarterbacks who I’ve coached against."

Playing quarterback is tough and Hurts right now is tougher than a truck-stop steak. And it's really hard not to root for him and a collision-course meeting with Alabama early next year.

UCLA, meanwhile, continues down a perilous path. If playing Oklahoma again was supposed to be some sort of a measuring indicator, well, the needle didn’t move.

The Bruins lost in Norman last year, 49-21, in Kelly’s second game.

UCLA trotted out the same quarterback for both games.

Oklahoma trotted out Kyler Murray and Hurts.

That’s a colossal mismatch and reason for UCLA fans to be genuinely concerned.

The crowd for Oklahoma, 52,578, was up from last week’s 36,000 in the loss to San Diego State.

That uptick, as we said, had more to do with Oklahoma fans taking over the visitor’s side and UCLA literally papering the house with free passes.

UCLA appears to be only three or four (hundred) players away from competing with the likes of Oklahoma.

Like the circus, or the Rolling Stones, we're glad the Sooners came to town.