UCLA Football in National Rankings: Ignore the Hype

UCLA is now ranked higher than the glorified community college/football school across town for the first time in more than a decade. The players and Bruin fans should ignore the hype because we still have ways to go.

There is already a fanshot and fanpost up about this afternoon's rankings. UCLA is ranked ahead of Southern Cal in both polls for the first time since 2001. In the AP poll Bruins moved up to number 17 spot and the USA Today/Coaches' poll Bruins entered the rankings the number 19 slot. The BCS rankings for week number 11 is not out yet. We can expect the Bruins to be in those BCS rankings for the first time since 2005 (when we were going through our fluke "10 win" season). The BCS rankings will be available here.

Either way our recommendation at this point is to completely ignore these rankings. None of this ranking chatter will matter if the Bruins show up flat and do a collective face plant in Pullman next Saturday night (if you didn't know the game has been scheduled for a 7:30 pm PST broadcast on the Deuce).

We have been around long enough and gone through enough heartbreaks since December 5, 1998 that we are going to remain guarded in our optimism. We know full well as good as last night felt, it will be all for not if the ghost of Timm Rosenbach (Google him or look him up through BN search machine) comes back to bite us in our collective rear ends. Heck, ask gbruin a little about Timm Rosnebach and he can tell you the story.

The Cougars are having a rough season. They haven't had a win this conference season. But they do have one of the best coaches in the game, who is not only an offensive wizard, but one of the best when it comes to getting his teams fired up for games. The Cougars are desperately looking for something to build on and end their season with some momentum in their new coaches' first year.

If the Bruins want to solidify the narrative of "turn around" then they will have to forget about these rankings, play with focus and determination next Saturday and move on to that next game.

Rankings right now don't matter much. They don't matter at all. If the Bruins get too comfortable reading the press clippings and riding the hype machine around them in LA, they will get lost in the wilderness all over again. We have already experienced that nightmare once this season in Strawberry Canyon. Let's hope they learned from that night and will not repeat the same nightmare (or many nightmares of last 14 plus years) again. Onward.

GO BRUINS.