UCLA Football Preparing to Open Season vs. Bowling Green, Record Heat

The Bruins won't only be facing off against the Falcons on Saturday – they'll also be taking on Mother Nature.

Saturday's forecast calls for temperatures approaching 103 degrees Fahrenheit in Pasadena, and an extreme heat warning has been in effect for the better part of a week. With UCLA football's matchup against Bowling Green scheduled for an 11:30 a.m. kickoff at the Rose Bowl, fans, coaches and student-athletes alike will be left to broil in the sun from start to finish.

UCLA Athletics is permitting fans to bring 32-ounce bottles – factory sealed or empty – to the game, and the stadium will be flush will refill stations, cooling stations and misting stations.

Coach Chip Kelly had another idea for how to beat the heat, albeit one with a questionable timeline.

"We’ll try to get a dome built between now and then," Kelly said Monday.

Redshirt senior offensive lineman Jon Gaines II is heading into his fifth season opener with the Bruins, and he has been a part of the program ever since Kelly arrived in 2018.

Kelly has long emphasized sports science in his practice and conditioning scheduling, which Gaines said has led to hydration tracking and more.

"The preparation starts now, and it started months ago," Gaines said. "You take care of your body, you get in the habit that when you get to game day it will be easier because you’ve built up those habits to the point where you’re prepared now to go out on Saturday."

UCLA practicing in escalating heats over the course of the past few weeks has given them some decent insight into what Saturday could be like, but the weather at Wasserman Football Center has yet to fully imitate what's in store in Pasadena over the weekend.

"You can’t manufacture it, it’s not like we can get reflective mirrors out there and make it a little bit hotter for our training sessions today," Kelly said. "But the one thing is both teams have to play in the same weather, so they’ll be in the same situation that we are."

The Bruins will have to deal with far more than the high temperatures Saturday, though, with the MAC's Bowling Green coming to town with a quarterback-centric offense and another upset on their minds.

The Falcons are 7-22 under coach Scot Loeffler, but they toppled eventual nine-win Minnesota on the road in Week 4 of the 2021 season. Given that general expectations have UCLA in the same nine-to-10-win ballpark this year, an upset certainly wouldn't be unprecedented.

Quarterback Matt McDonald – the son of former USC quarterback Paul McDonald – will be at the center of essentially everything Loeffler runs on that side of the ball Saturday. McDonald completed 60.1% of his passes last year, racking up 2,555 yards and 12 touchdowns through the air while picking up another four scores with his legs

And with last season's leading rusher, running back Terion Stewart, announcing he would be taking the season off earlier in the week, the shifty and mobile McDonald will likely be taking on an even larger role in the Falcons' game plan.

"I think their quarterback does a really good job of extending plays and doing great with working with what he has," edge rusher Bo Calvert said. "He's the type of guy that you gotta kinda keep in the pocket and you gotta make sure that he's not gonna escape."

McDonald's counterpart, quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson, can't shoot for the same goal of pulling off an upset, given that UCLA enters the game as a 25-point favorite.

Instead, Thompson-Robinson said he is ready to take the Bruins to the next level this season – his fifth as the starting quarterback.

That starts with a win over the Falcons on Saturday, and Thompson-Robinson said he is hoping it ends with the Bruins raising a trophy by year's end.

"Yeah, we're definitely pushing for that," Thompson-Robinson said. "Our mindset and mission is to win it all this year, and I think that's the habits that we're putting in on a day-to-day basis."

UCLA and Bowling Green are scheduled to kick off at 11:30 a.m.

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