EMOTIONAL RESCUE

You Can’t Always Get What You Want  — The only hope this week for Satisfaction (and to avoid a 19th Nervous Breakdown) would be to amp up the raw emotion, hope for a letdown, Let It Bleed, and have absolutely No Sympathy for the Devil.  And Sticky Fingers would help too

Don’t Start Me Up.  On paper, u$c is a Rock, to UCLA’s scissors.  The Bruins are expected to get Shattered by more than two Touchdowns, by the Rolling Stones that are the trojans.  Gimme Shelter!  I would be amazed if it were that close.  UCLA has lost five games this year, and the last four of those losses were by 29, 26, 36, and 25 Points.  When UCLA is overmatched, they barely put up a fight.  Rick Neuheisel has not been successful in stopping the bleeding, making mid-game adjustments, or motivating the troops at Halftime.  Time has not been On Their Side.

The only way the final score will be Respectable is if the trojans experience a major LETDOWN after their emotionally draining victory over Oregon.  U$C has every reason to be totally COMPLACENT.  They wake up cocky every day anyway, so considering the match-up, they will not be taking the Bruins seriously.  If UCLA can play with all the emotion they can muster, like their lives depended on the outcome, and the trojans just mail it in, then maybe it won’t be over by Halftime.  But don’t count on it.

There are rumors of both schools wearing brand new, special uniforms for the game — Trojans in all-Black, Bruins in all-White.  That would be too bad, as the emotional edge would be a wash, and it would kill the coolest thing about the Rivalry — The colorful tradition of both teams wearing home jerseys.

A humiliating loss for the Bruins will have a silver lining:  It could possibly cement a regime change in Westwood.  NOT that I am personally calling for one, but a very large contingent of UCLA fans will find that a definite quantum of SOLACE, in the wake of a blowout.  Of course if the unimaginable happens and the Bruins pull off the unlikely upset, Neuheisel would probably earn another year — a reward to which I would have no objection.  Of course, unless there is another outbreak of Measles in South Central, an upset seems like a pipe dream.  I feel like Barkley, Woods and Lee — just the 3 of them — could come out and score at will, without even fielding an Offensive Line.  And the Bruins can only succeed on Offense when Kevin Prince is churning out big yardage with his legs, and I don’t see sc falling for the Read Option fakes that allow Prince to turn the corner.

I just don’t see it happening.  It may sound like deja vu, because I sing this same tune every year.  And unfortunately, I have been right every time, except once.  2006 was the exception.  It is that memorable 13-9 shocker that keeps me from skipping the game altogether.  As we learned 5 years ago, anything can happen, regardless of how improbable it may seem.  But it sure would help if Barkley, Woods and Lee all get busted and suspended — maybe for cheating on midterms — sometime before Saturday.

Now, to start off Rivalry Week in style, here are 25 photos of the UCLA Spirit Squad, in action last Saturday.  Click on the horizontal pics to ZOOM in.