Connon: LSU Game Presents UCLA With Concrete Chance to Rebound

The Bruins could vault themselves onto the national stage with a win against the Tigers on Saturday

Beating Hawaii is one thing.

Beating LSU is another.

UCLA football (1-0) will host the 2019 national champions at the Rose Bowl on Saturday with a real shot at taking down the No. 16-ranked Tigers. After opening the season with a 34-point win over the Rainbow Warriors in Week 0, the Bruins are now just 2.5-point underdogs to LSU.

What ends up happening on the field, in the stands and on the sidelines will surely be interesting to follow between now and the final whistle, but once again, it's important to identify the stakes for coach Chip Kelly and UCLA heading into the primetime matchup.

Kelly's job isn't on the line this week, although putting together a solid campaign as a whole will secure him a job in Westwood for at least another year. The fact of the matter is that if UCLA wins just two of its six games against LSU, Arizona State, Oregon, Washington, Utah and USC and takes care of business in the games it's favored in, that's eight wins right there.

As we laid out last week, eight wins is our threshold of success for Kelly, and going 2-4 against preseason AP top 25 teams does not seem like too high a bar for him to clear. Even with a loss to the Tigers, Kelly's Bruins can go 2-3 against those remaining ranked Pac-12 teams and still hit that eight-win mark.

So barring an embarrassing blowout that robs UCLA of all the momentum it built up last week, the Bruins are playing with house money.

Lose, and you have enough wiggle room to recover by entering conference play with a winning record and a clean slate. Win, and you're very likely in next week's top 25 with the highest-quality win of any Pac-12 team to this point.

Win, and you can make an argument you're the best team out West. Win, and you can circle the Pac-12 Championship on your calendar. Not that it'd be a lock, especially considering the game's lack on impact on the conference standings, but it would at the very least demonstrate UCLA could play big programs on big stages with top-tier talent and emerge victorious.

And on top of that, entering the rankings and holding a spot in the national conversation would be a welcome change of pace for the Bruins. Over the last four seasons, the only time UCLA has really been discussed by the national media has been following one-off games like the wins over Texas A&M in 2017, Washington State in 2019 and Hawaii in 2021, the last of which had to do with the lack of other games in Week 0 more than anything else.

Losing to the Tigers would virtually wipe out any good faith the Bruins earned against the Rainbow Warriors, and they would disappear out of the general public's frame of mind almost immediately.

With a brand as big as UCLA, it shouldn't be rare to be discussed in circles from Seattle to Miami, New York and Milwaukee. Every game should be an event, and every week they should have some form of a spotlight on them. That hasn't been the case over the past few seasons, but it could be in the near future.

Beating LSU would vault UCLA into the phones and homes of college football fans across the country, and the Kelly revival would spark discussions online and on TV, the likes of which haven't surrounded Westwood since Brett Hundley left.

In terms of the game's singular importance to the 2021 season, the Bruins' Pac-12 title hopes or Kelly's job security, it is just like any other game.

But no college football game exists in a vacuum, and it would be naive to overlook what's on the line for UCLA on Saturday.

There may not be much to lose, but there certainly is plenty to gain.

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