UCLA Is Your New Playoff Dark Horse

UCLA football players are using eye black as war paint, coach Jim Mora is using language at pep rallies that has to be censored and the team just outmuscled its usual bully, USC. What on earth is happening with laid-back, soft, second-fiddle-in-the-sun UCLA football?    

The Bruins are clearly one of the four best college football teams in the country right now. Better than Florida State. Better than Mississippi State. Maybe better than anyone. They're making a late run like we usually see and love with March Madness. When the College Football Playoff rankings come out Tuesday, UCLA figures to be ranked no higher than No. 7 or No. 8.

Date	Result/opponent
Aug. 30	UCLA 28, Virginia 20
Sept. 6	UCLA 42, Memphis 35
Sept. 13	UCLA 20, Texas 17
Sept. 25	UCLA 62, Arizona State 27
Oct. 4	Utah 30, UCLA 28
Oct. 11	Oregon 42, UCLA 30
Oct. 18	UCLA 36, Cal 34
Oct. 25	UCLA 40, Colorado 37 (2OT)
Nov. 1	UCLA 17, Arizona 7
Nov. 8	UCLA 44, Washington 30
Nov. 22	UCLA 38, USC 20
Nov. 28	vs. Stanford

It might be the new dark-horse candidate for getting one of the four spots in the playoff, but because it took a while for the team to develop this far, it is a dark horse at best.

The question for the playoff selection committee is whether it's supposed to pick the four teams with the best body of work for the whole season or just the four best teams on Dec. 7, the day the regular season ends.

There is a difference.

For all the chatter this year about the playoff and who belongs, how have we gotten this far without anyone mentioning UCLA? Actually, there was a little talk earlier, until the Bruins lost to Utah and Oregon at home.

Now, Mora's team has rounded perfectly into his vision, but is there room for a team like that in the playoff? There should be. But there has always been the feeling that a deserving squad or two is going to be left out.

That's why it should be an eight-team field, with the winners of the top five conferences guaranteed a spot. That way teams can get better as the year goes on and not be punished for finding their footing early on.

Mora has gotten UCLA here by focusing on toughness, the opposite of UCLA's image. USC was always the one beating up on UCLA. Yes, this past week, we saw the war paint and the fired-up language from Mora.

Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

But I got to see another toughness-building ritual in person at a team practice in summer 2013. When practice ended, the players walked off, except for the kicking team, which lined up a 52-yard field-goal attempt for kicker Ka'imi Fairbairn. It was a sunny day, but one of the assistant coaches stood near the line of scrimmage with two spray bottles, bobbing and weaving while squirting water in Fairbairn's face during the attempt.

The kick was good, and Fairbairn explained a few minutes later that that's how practice ended every day, with him making a 52-yarder, the distance he had missed in the rain in the final minutes of the 2012 Pac-12 title game. Sometimes, people sprayed stuff at him, sometimes threw stuff at him, sometimes bumped him.

It was all part of Mora's toughening-up of soft UCLA. Even the kicker wasn't exempt.

"We're a physical football team," Mora said in his postgame press conference Saturday. "UCLA is a physical team. We take pride in the way we play."

It is trendy in L.A. to say that UCLA now owns the town. Mora said it last year, per Jill Painter the Los Angeles Daily News. And after the game Saturday, quarterback Brett Hundley told reporters: 

Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

The key word there was "stomp." I'm not sure UCLA really owns the town yet; it takes a long time to make a change that big stick. Kids grow up in L.A. wanting to play for USC. But Mora, in his third year at UCLA, has beaten USC three times in a row.

And this win over the Trojans carried extra meaning for UCLA, not only because it showed that the offensive line has developed from early in the year, that Hundley has calmed down and the defensive front was finally all over a quarterback, sacking USC's Cody Kessler six times.

It was because UCLA was so physically dominating. And doing that to USC was the breakthrough the Bruins needed nationally.

But is it too late to get into the playoff? We can't just forget two losses. None of the other contenders has more than one unless you count Georgia as a contender.

The truth about this season, though, is that there is no dominant team. Some school was going to have to emerge and grow into a national champion. Maybe that's Alabama, but it doesn't seem right that it had to be one that was already a top squad in the first few weeks of the campaign.

Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

UCLA has played the nation's ninth-toughest schedule, according to Jeff Sagarin's ratings (via USA Today). It has wins over Arizona, Arizona State, USC and Texas. If it beats Stanford on Friday and Oregon in the Pac-12 title game, then it will deserve a spot.

The committee has been ranking UCLA higher than most people would have. Give it credit: It has seen something others have missed. But the math is going to be hard for UCLA to get past. It might need Ohio State to lose the Big Ten title game, Florida State to lose to Florida, maybe even Baylor to lose to Kansas State.

Mora said the win over USC "sets us up to keep chasing our dreams."

He was talking about the Pac-12 title. But with a four-team playoff, one of the best squads in the nation shouldn't have to stop dreaming there.

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report. He also writes for The New York Times and was formerly a scribe for FoxSports.com and the Chicago Sun-Times. Follow him on Twitter @gregcouch.