Saturday is big for UCLA-USC. Thursday might be bigger.

The Bruins' plan to leave the Pac-12 for the Big 10 still needs approval from upstairs.

If your friend says he knows USC and UCLA football, ask him about Zenon Andrusyshyn and Bill Hayhoe.

Andrusyshyn was born in Germany, moved with his family to Canada, and was throwing the javelin in the Commonwealth Games when UCLA offered a track scholarship. He hurt his arm and decided to try punting and placekicking. He was pretty good at it, too, an All-American punter in 1967 and 1969. 

But the fathers and grandfathers of those who will be tailgating outside the Rose Bowl on Saturday remember what happened when he ran into Bill Hayhoe, or when his kicks did.

Hayhoe was a 6-foot-8 offensive lineman who would play five years for Green Bay. Nothing he ever did resounded like the way he spooked Andrusyshyn. Hayhoe blocked two of his field goals earlier in the game, and when UCLA scored the go-ahead touchdown, he blocked the extra point. That allowed USC to win, 21-20, after O.J. Simpson (pictured) ran 64 yards on a play called 23-Blast, probably the most famous runaway in USC history and, for 17 years, the most famous by Simpson, too.

The Trojans thus became No. 1 in 1967 and, despite a 3-0 loss at Oregon State, were voted national champions. But that was only one of several USC-UCLA games that sent shock waves beyond L.A.

In 1987 UCLA was seeking a Rose Bowl bid and maybe even a national championship, but USC earned the Pasadena trip with a 17–13 upset, thanks to Rodney Peete’s TD pass to Eric Affholter that surely would be subject to review today. Or, as the Los Angeles Times headline proclaimed, “Trojans Go For the Juggler.” USC also won because of Peete’s desperate sprint to run down Eric Turner at the end of the first half, when Turner seemed long gone with an interception.

The 1990 game did not have national ramifications, but it was a gateway to college football’s future. UCLA’s Tommy Maddox threw for a school record 409 yards, outrageous at the time, and put the Bruins ahead with 1:19 left. USC’s’ Todd Marinovich hustled the Trojans downfield and hit Johnnie Morton with the 45-42 game-winner at the 0:16 mark. That’s a halftime score in some American Conference and Big 12 locales today.

But, since then, USC-UCLA has become strictly local news. Neither team has qualified for the College Football Playoff in its eight-year history. Most of the questions at game time are “Who’s the next (USC or UCLA) coach?” 

Saturday will be different. USC is a few dominos away from making the CFP, provided it beats UCLA this week, Notre Dame next week, and someone else in the Pac-12 championship. UCLA, in the second quality season of Chip Kelly’s five-year tenure, can ruin those ambitions. Its quarterback, Dorian Thompson-Robinson, has been discussing how much his team hates USC. (Contrary to popular opinion, he was not at the Coliseum to see 23-Blast).

If there is hatred in this game, it’s disguised as vague contempt in the other 51 weeks. The schools are not as different as they once were. USC has become much more exclusive (and expensive), and UCLA remains one of the leading public universities in the nation. There is no real culture clash here, not like Oregon/Oregon State or Ohio State/Michigan. Nobody is poisoning trees around Westwood or shooting the television. You have a much better chance of getting your ass kicked at a Giants-Dodgers game.

But the statues of Tommy Trojan and the UCLA bear are still safeguarded, and the Trojans acutely remember that UCLA put last year’s score (62-33) in huge letters on the elevator doors of the Ackerman Student Union. There will be tears in some of the seats on Saturday, if not much blood and sweat.

By then, UCLA will have already played its biggest game of the week.

On Thursday, the University of California Regents convene, and it’s possible they will decide whether to allow UCLA’s proposed defection to the Big 10 in 2024-25. USC, a private school, is already gone. But when UCLA decided to join the Trojans, it abandoned the University of California, Berkeley, flagship of the UC system. That system does not like to favor one child over the other, and its officials have already told the Bruins they acted prematurely.

UCLA claims it will have to cut its rich Olympic sports programs if it doesn’t grab Big Ten gold. And it is not UCLA’s fault that ex-Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott shanked the conference TV package and lost touch with the Big 10 and SEC. But UCLA is faithful, at least verbally, to the student-athlete concept. Sending its basketball teams to State College, Pa. or Champaign, Ill. for conference games in mid-week and mid-winter isn’t conducive to academics or smart finance.

Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff claims to hear grave misgivings from UCLA people. Bill Walton wrote a plaintive letter in which he said he had encountered no one, “other than the highest-level directors of athletes at UCLA,” who liked the idea.

“I went to UCLA – gladly, willingly, proudly,” Walton wrote. “It was my dream. That dream never included the Big 10…This proposed move to the Big 10 is all about football, and money…These same proponents of moving to the Big 10 are the first people I have ever encountered in my life who have claimed economic hardship and limitations in Los Angeles, and that the solution lies in the Midwest.”

In a survey of 111 UCLA athletes, ninety-three percent said they wanted to stay in the same conference as USC, as opposed to 24 percent who said it was just as important to stay with Cal. However, only 35 percent said it was a good idea to go to the Big 10. Seven percent were opposed, but 38 percent said they needed more information.

But zero percent of UCLA officials say that there is any good reason besides money to do this, to cut ties to schools that the Bruins have played for decades, to make it more difficult and expensive to watch the Bruins on the road, and to force the baseball team to chase a conference title amid snowflakes.

A decision by the Regents is not guaranteed on Thursday, but a major jump in the Saturday’s drama is guaranteed if they say no to UCLA. That might mean the beginning of the end of the rivalry. If you assume the Trojans and Bruins would play each other anyway,, ask Texas and Texas A&M, or Kansas and Missouri.

When Oregon basketball coach Dana Altman was asked if the L.A. escape would affect the Pac-12, he noted that USC hasn’t won the league title since 1985 and that UCLA has won one Pac-12 tournament and one regular season championship since Altman came west in 2010. Arizona and Oregon have carried the flag, not the L.A. schools.

When UCLA basketball coach Mick Cronin was asked the same question at the Pac-12 Media Day, he declined to discuss the Big 10 and simply said he wanted to talk about the current players.

Football? The Pac-12 has held its conference championship game 11 times. USC and UCLA have appeared twice each, won one (USC in 2017) and lost three. Oregon has made five appearances and won four.

We all know how little that means to the Big 10. They’re interested in how many people watch its network and its games. They’re buying a market, not two universities.

Regardless, all the spreadsheets and PowerPoints fade on Saturday in favor of three-and-a-half passionate hours. And by then we’ll know if California’s educators have become Bill Hayhoe, rejecting Zenon Andrusyshyn.