UCLA will try to avoid equaling its losingest football season when it faces crosstown rival USC Saturday at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Oddmakers have made the Trojans a 21 1/2 point favorite. ESPN Analytics gives USC a 94.9% chance of winning, UCLA a 5.1% chance.
The game will be the Bruins’ last of the season. The Trojans have qualified for a bowl.
USC leads the series 51-34-7, not including victories in 2004 and 2005 that were vacated as part of the penalties issued by the NCAA for improper benefits accepted by 2005 Heisman Trophy-winning running back Reggie Bush and his family.
UCLA has won just seven of the past 26 meetings.
The Bruins (3-8) have lost their last four games by a combined score of 180-51, allowing at least 48 points three times. UCLA also lost its first four games and were outscored 125-57.
Coach DeShaun Foster was fired Sep. 14, two days after the 35-10 loss to New Mexico dropped the Bruins to 0-3 and 5-10 in Foster’s stint as their coach.
Tim Skipper was appointed as his replacement on an interim basis. He had been hired as special assistant to the head coach in July after being Fresno State’s interim coach for the 2023 New Mexico Bowl and 2024 season.
UCLA also made in-season changes with both coordinators.
Defensive coordinator Ikaika Malloe was fired Sept. 17. Kevin Coyle assumed Malloe’s defensive play-calling duties beginning with the 17-14 loss to Northwestern Sept. 27, also Skipper’s first game as interim coach.
Coyle had spent the first month of the season as a senior defensive analyst at Syracuse.
UCLA and offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri mutually parted ways following the Northwestern loss. The Bruins averaged 14.3 points in Sunseri’s four games as offensive coordinator, 132nd among the 134 Football Bowl Subdivision teams.
Sunseri was replaced by Jerry Neuheisel, who had been tight ends coach and assistant head coach. UCLA upset then seventh-ranked Penn State, 42-37, in Neuheisel’s first game as offensive play caller, becoming the first team to enter a game 0-4 or worse and beat an team in the Top 10 of The Associated Press since 1985 when UTEP defeated then seventh-ranked BYU.
The Bruins also won their next two games, defeating Michigan State, 38-13, and Maryland, 20-17, but haven’t won since.
Neuheisel is a son of Rick Neuheisel, whose career as UCLA’s quarterback was highlighted by being selected as the Player of the Game in its 45-9 upset victory over Illinois in the 1984 Rose Bowl and was the team’s coach from 2008-11.
The Bruins’ first nine-loss season came in 1940, when their quarterback was Jackie Robinson, who seven years later would break Major League Baseball’s color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers. UCLA lost six games by seven points or less in 1940 — two each by three and seven and one each by two and six — completing the season 1-9.
The Bruins’ other nine-loss season was 2019 when they were 3-9 in Chip Kelly’s first season as coach.
USC (8-3) dropped three spots to 19th in The Associated Press poll following last Saturday’s 42-27 loss at Oregon which ended its slight chance of reaching the College Football Playoff.
The Trojans are seeking their second season with a least nine victories since 2018. They won at least nine games in each of Pete Carroll’s final nine seasons as coach
Statistically, USC’s strongest facet is third-down conversions, sixth in FBS, converting 51.1% of the time. Its next-highest ranked area is passing offense, seventh in FBS, averaging 301.1 yards per game.
UCLA is fourth in red zone offense, scoring 96.4% of the time. The Bruins are 28th in passing yards allowed, averaging 191.1.
USC has won each of the past five games against UCLA, including the Trojans’ 19-13 victory at the Rose Bowl last season.
The winner on Saturday will get possession of the Victory Bell, a 295-pound bell that originally hung atop a Southern Pacific freight locomotive and was given to the UCLA Alumni Association in 1939. In 1941, it was taken by a group of USC students who hid it in a variety of locations for more than a year.
Following an intervention by school administrators, the student body presidents of both schools signed an agreement in 1942 providing that the winner of the football game would keep possession for the next year, a tradition that has continued, along with painting the bell’s carriage in the school color of the winner.
Kickoff is set for 4:45 p.m. The game will be televised by NBC. The UCLA radio broadcast will be on KABC-AM 790 and the USC broadcast on ESPN LA 710AM.