He's (Southpaw Jesus - ed.) not only a football player, he's UCLA's great hope to put the Bruins atop the Pac-10 standings again, although Coach Karl Dorrell has some explaining to do.

For the last few weeks he has maintained the starting quarterback position is up for grabs between Olson and Patrick Cowan. It makes you wonder if Dorrell has his eyes open while watching practice.

Cowan might be a wonderful young man, maybe a Rhodes scholar or future contestant on "Big Brother," but you put him on the same football field as Olson, and it's a mismatch.

Cowan labors when he throws, and that's when he takes the time to throw instead of scrambling for the sideline. He also throws a pretty good knuckler, which is all right if you're pitching, but not always effective when throwing to a group of inexperienced receivers, as he did in Saturday's scrimmage.

Olson is left-handed, the first obvious difference, and wears No. 7, the number bringing to mind John Elway, and the not-so modest admission by Olson that a top recruiting service referred to him as "the left-handed John Elway" when he was rated the No. 1 recruit in the nation coming out of Thousand Oaks High.

Like Elway, Olson has the ability to sidestep the rush and deliver a deep ball. He might not be as fast as Elway -- "You'll see," disagreed Olson -- and he certainly doesn't have the weight-room-carved body yet to survive the beating Elway took, but he's just beginning his collegiate career. At age 23.

"I'm not as mature as everyone thinks," he joked, but he already carries himself like a team leader and greets everyone as if he's running for office.

Now maybe it's only rust, but if there's a flaw, it appeared Olson was a little slow in his downfield decisions, making him a sack waiting to happen, but then most of the time the Bruins had him firing short, quick, crisp passes against an improved-looking defense.

I asked about the so-called quarterback controversy, and he explained he has been looking for separation, and finally got it for the first time in the scrimmage.

It was just a lot of blah, blah, blah to disguise the fact Dorrell wanted to keep Olson competitively challenged, stealing a page out of Pete Carroll's coaching manual.