PASADENA – For the first time Saturday, I felt more excited than resigned about UCLA’s move to the Big Ten.
I saw the vision: A Rose Bowl filled to the brim – or close to it – with invested fans. A crowd and an atmosphere actually befitting a nationally ranked college football team in the sport’s most venerable venue. Noise and energy and the Goodyear Blimp circling above. A slow, grind-it-out drive to score a Rose Bowl parking spot.
And black cowboy hats. Oversized replica golden chains. The same message on dozens of black T-shirts: “I AIN’T HARD 2 FIND.”
It was UCLA’s homecoming game, but thank Deion Sanders and his swaggering Colorado team for the surge in interest and attendance to see the Bruins’ 28-16 victory: 71,343, a season-high – for any Pac-12 game.
That’s well more than the Bruins’ previous high, 43,705 in their opener against Coastal Carolina, about twice as much as the last time Colorado visited, in 2021 – and the largest since 2017, when UCLA hired Coach Chip Kelly, who was on the receiving end of a large bouquet of proverbial flowers from Sanders postgame: “One of the real ones, one of the good ones.”
The Buffs (3-7) averaged 8.5 million TV viewers through September, though three losses in four games had dampened interest some: 3.3 million tuned in to see Colorado lose to Stanford on Oct. 13 – still more than the 1.25 million viewers the Bruins averaged per game last year.
And the Buffs have been a hot ticket wherever they go – eight consecutive sellouts, by Sanders’ count. That now includes UCLA (6-4), which had to remove a couple of tarps to make room for everyone who showed up Saturday – when tickets that normally cost $33 were being sold for $200 on the secondary market hours before kickoff.
Colorado’s in town. pic.twitter.com/VZSII6kTpQ
— Mirjam Swanson (@MirjamSwanson) October 28, 2023
But thank realignment too; safe to say many Buffs fans – who comprised perhaps 20% of fans Saturday – felt now-or-never urgency with this one, the last time Big 12-bound Colorado and Big Ten-bound UCLA will meet as members of the Pac-12 Conference.
“I always wanted to go to the Rose Bowl and this is the last year playing here,” said Caleb Roehrs, a native Coloradan who came to the game Saturday with his former Colorado roommate Jeff Kim. “And unfortunately, they never made it to the actual Rose Bowl (game).”
The crowd included Colorado fans like Roehrs, who’ve stuck with his alma mater’s football team through many lean years.
But there were also plenty more fans who are, as Nathan Joseph put it, “riding the wave” of the Buffs’ new relevance and inspired by Coach Prime and what he’s building. Those folks arrived from New Orleans and Hawaii, Oklahoma City and Dallas, Thousand Oaks and Paso Robles.
Wherever they came from, and whatever their calculus for coming, Saturday’s crowd felt like a sneak preview of what a Bruins home game might feel like in the next couple seasons against Iowa or Minnesota, or the season after that, against Nebraska and Penn State.
Or any of their Big Ten brethren who either travel – or have relocated to L.A. – in big numbers. They’ll come initially not because it’s the last time they can see a team play a conference in the Rose Bowl, but because it’s the first.
“This is the Rose Bowl – and you get to support the Buffs, so it’s a great combination!” said Dallas resident LaTanya Rainey, a new fan who was attending her second Colorado game. “The weather is nice, you’re in L.A., it’s all the great pieces together for a good weekend.”
Another fan – Coach Prime – talked about coaching in the venue as pinch-me moment.
“We was just coaching youth football seven years ago and we’re in the darn Rose Bowl?” Sanders asked. “And you want me to question how good my God is?”
You have to figure that out-of-the-area recruits’ families might have similar feelings. And that recruits themselves, from here or elsewhere, would prefer to perform before a big crowd than a stadium that isn’t even halfway full – even if, these days, it’s going to take visiting fans taking over swaths of the Rose Bowl to make it happen.
Better to have opponent’s fans in those seats than nobody in them at all.
“Looking up at all those fans, that’s what college football should be,” UCLA quarterback Ethan Garbers said. “The stadium packed, everyone on their feet.”
The press box didn’t get to shaking Saturday, mostly because the teams delivered such a steady diet of defense – No. 23 UCLA sacked Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders seven times. And the Buffs forced two fumbles and intercepted two passes.
The Bruins led just 7-6 at halftime, but they scored touchdowns on three of their first four drives in the second half to take control – and in the end, UCLA sent home Colorado fans unhappy.
It’ll likely take more than one half of productive football – and at least one pressbox-shaking play or two – to regularly disappoint visiting Big Ten fans.
But in Saturday’s preview, against a well-supported but work-in-progress Buffs, the Bruins successfully played the role of unwelcoming hosts.
So, as Garbers put it: “We hope we can do it again.”