The No. 1 Ohio State Buckeyes (9-0, 6-0) head back home to Columbus to protect their perfect record and welcome in the UCLA Bruins (3-6, 3-3) for a nighttime showdown on NBC.
Here are five things to know
about the UCLA Bruins.
Tim Skipper and Jerry Neuheisel have fixed the program…for now
After starting 0-3 with losses to Utah, UNLV, and New Mexico, the Bruins fired head coach DeShaun Foster and named Tim Skipper, who was the special assistant to the head coach, as the interim head coach.
The Bruins also fired offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri, and Jerry Neuheisel became the interim offensive coordinator. In their second game, Skipper and Neuheisel led the Bruins to a 42-37 win over then No. 7 Penn State Nittany Lions. They then defeated Michigan State 38-13 and Maryland 20-17 to get to 3-1 as a staff. Since then, they have lost to Indiana and Nebraska.
Nico Iamaleava returns to Columbus
This will be the second night game that UCLA starting quarterback Nico Iamaleava has played in.
In the first round of the playoff last season, Iamaleava threw for just 104 yards on 14-for-31 passing and no touchdowns. He ran for 20 carries, 47 yards, and 2 touchdowns as the Buckeyes rolled into the second round with a 42-17 win.
This will likely be a similar result with much lower stakes.
The Bruins give up a lot of points
UCLA gives up the second-most points per game in the Big Ten at 30.7 points per game. The only team worse is Michigan State, who give up 31.4 points per game. UCLA also has the worst point differential in the conference at -10.2, since they only average 20.4 points per game.
Expect the Buckeyes to score early in this contest.
UCLA could be moving to… SoFi Stadium?
There is a lot of legality and things to this that I don’t need to go into right now, as it needs to sort itself out, but the long story short is the UCLA Bruins are trying to move its home stadium to SoFi Stadium, where the LA Rams and Chargers currently play.
We will see what happens with this, but less football at the Rose Bowl is always going to be a bad thing to me.
The internet started at UCLA
You might not have known this (or maybe you did), but the Internet started at UCLA in 1969. The first Internet transmission was sent from UCLA to Stanford University. According to UCLA, right after it was sent, the computer sending it broke down.
