Historians looking back at UCLA’s 2025 football season will peg the Penn State game as the Bruins’ first victory.
In ways both large and small, they will be wrong.
When Tim Skipper first took over the team a month ago, he placed a new opponent on the schedule: the locker room. The interim coach showed players pictures of how it should look, including the lockers and the surrounding floor.
They scrubbed the place and it’s been spotless ever since. Sort of like the Bruins’ play starting with that Penn State game.
“I think a clean locker room makes you a lot happier,” Skipper explained this week. “It shows team discipline and it shows you can win off the field, so now you can go ahead and get on the field.”
Skipper’s other primary motivational device — besides his highly transmissible energy — has been slogans. He started by telling his players to strain, to give everything they had in the pursuit of winning. After the Bruins beat Penn State, he asked players whether they were one-hit wonders. Now, his players having established they know what it takes to win following a smackdown of Michigan State, he’s asking them to maintain their approach.
At their Sunday meeting, the Bruins saw their new mantra — the standard is the standard — on a big screen.
“We have identified a style of play that we want to be, and it’s our job now to keep the standard the standard, you know, play with that fanatical effort, play with fundamentals, being smart, you know, all those things we just have to continue to do,” Skipper said. “But it’s not like something that’s just going to show up on Saturday. You have to practice about it. You have to work on it and not just talk about it.”
Can the Bruins keep it up after two consecutive victories? Here are five things to watch Saturday afternoon at the Rose Bowl when UCLA (2-4 overall, 2-1 Big Ten) faces Maryland (4-2, 1-2):