FanHouse is counting down the ten best, ten worst, and ten weirdest moments in the history of Big Ten football.
Above: Rick Neuheisel (right) and Troy Aikman in Neuheisel's first coaching stint at UCLA.
Not many people remember it, but for a few years in the early 1980s, the Big Ten played a full round-robin schedule, as opposed to the current "skip the same two teams for two years in a row" format that has been in place since Penn State joined the conference. During that brief period, one team actually managed to defeat all nine of its conference opponents: Mike White's Fighting Illini, in the 1983 season. The Angry Indigenous Woodlands People dropped their first game to Missouri, then ran off ten straight wins, entering the Granddaddy of Them All 10-1 and ranked fourth in the nation.
And on the other side of the field? Terry Donahue's UCLA Bruins, a team so dazzlingly awesome they went 0-3 in their non-conference games. The doddering Bruins won the Pac-10 almost by default that season; they were 6-1-1 in conference play (ties were still allowed back then), and 6-4-1 overall. (Can you imagine the outcry today if a six-win team got a BCS berth?)
So, obviously, there was no hope for the Bruins. You'll note, however, that this game wound up on the Big Ten's "worst moments," and of course there's a reason for that.
The reason is that, apparently, the world-beating Illini team that ran the table in the Big Ten was mysteriously replaced by the football team from Cal Tech.
On offense, the usually reliable Jack Trudeau stunk it up something fierce. He threw three picks, two of them to UCLA safety Don Rogers. Trudeau did manage to toss a touchdown in the fourth quarter, but his pass on the two-point conversion attempt failed. But, in Trudeau's defense, the rushing game literally did nothing to help him. Dwight Beverly and Thomas Rooks combined for all of 43 yards rushing, but there were so many plays which went for losses that Illinois wound up with a net rushing total of zero yards.
The Illini defense, on the other hand, was nothing less than brilliant, holding the Bruins to a mere 511 yards of total offense and only 45 points. This on a day when UCLA's quarterback woke up with food poisoning, for crying out loud. But that quarterback still managed to have a career day against Cal Tech Illinois, throwing for 298 yards and three touchdowns, two of them to the same receiver. The UCLA QB was Rick Neuheisel. The receiver was Karl Dorrell. That probably means something, but I'm not sure what.
What I am sure of is that this was hands-down the worst-ever performance by any Big Ten team in a bowl game, and yes, I am aware of the 2007 BCS Title Game. This was worse. Much worse. Florida, at least, was ranked.
