USC played another mistake-filled game yesterday, and suddenly all my Bruin friends are going out of their way to tell me that it's a new era, and UCLA is back.
In the Pac-12, you aren't really back until you win a Rose Bowl.
And it's been a long time since UCLA won a Rose Bowl. How long?
This long: when UCLA last won a Rose Bowl,
- Ronald Reagan was still president
- There were two Germanies
- There was no Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame
- No one had ever heard of Chernobyl
- Every Space Shuttle was still intact
- No one had ever caught a computer virus
- Macs didn't have color screens
- You couldn't drive or take a train from England to France
- People couldn't wait for Top Gun to come out
- and no one knew who Ferris Bueller was
- Gasoline was 93 cents a gallon
- The Dow was under 1600
- Patrick Ewing was in the middle of a spectacular rookie season
- David Robinson hadn't finished growing
- Barack Obama was thinking about applying to law school
- Family Ties and the Cosby Show were the top TV shows
- World population was under 5 billion (it's now over 7 billion)
- "Say You, Say Me" was the number one song on Billboard
- Long Beach St. and Cal State Fullerton had division I football teams
- There were 21 independents
- Division I football conferences included the Southwest Conference, the Missouri Valley Conference, and the Pacific Coast Athletic Association
- The Big XII was the Big 8
- Anaheim and Fresno were bowl game destinations
- L. Ron Hubbard, James Cagney and Cary Grant were still alive, and of course,
- None of the current UCLA football players had been born
Man, that was a long, long time ago.
So enjoy your schadenfreude, my Bruin friends, but don't go high-fiving yourselves raw just yet.
You need to beat Stanford and/or Oregon and then probably Nebraska before you get to call yourselves Rose Bowl Champions again.
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