Greg Schain Schain's roommate thinks Madonna wrote the song "American Pie." E-mail him at gregoreo@ucla.edu.

There’s an old adage in sports that says, “It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.”



This wise proverb haunts the UCLA football team year after year.

It seems like every year, the same storyline is written. The Bruins start out hot, upsetting teams that are ranked Top 10 in the nation.

The wins earn them a Top-10 spot in the AP poll. People around Westwood get excited for a possible run at a national championship.

Then the team, overconfident and overrated, collapses faster than the Taliban.

It’s like a broken record by now – a broken record that I’m sick of hearing. The team needs to address some fundamental flaws in the offseason in order to right this ship. The following obvious changes need to be made:

1. UCLA needs a new starting quarterback. Cory Paus has proven that he can’t run an effective offense without the presence of running back DeShaun Foster lined up behind him.

Foster isn’t gonna be here next year, and the team will be in trouble if it doesn’t have a quarterback who can step up and lead the offense.

Paus has looked absolutely awful in UCLA’s last four losses. The numbers: zero TDs, eight interceptions. All have been in big games when UCLA has needed a win. A true winner comes through in clutch situations, and Paus hasn’t.

It’s a good start that he’s benched for the rest of the season. He needs to stay there next season also.

What other options do the Bruin faithful have?

Not many, I’m afraid. Backup Scott McEwan, who will start this weekend against ASU, is graduating. This year’s third-string option, Ryan McCann, will be a senior and can start next season. He led UCLA to a comeback wins over then-No. 3 Alabama and then-No. 3 Michigan early in the 2000 season, but was ineffective in his other two starts.

It would still be wiser though, to give McCann a shot than to let Paus start another year.

Clearly the best option is to give the ball to one of the two freshman recruits who are projected to come in – Matt Moore or Drew Olson. Reports say that the two are pretty similar in terms of talent, so it would be up to the coaching staff which one to pick.

McCann might have growing pains next season, but short-term suffering could pay dividends in the long run.

Whatever they do, one thing is clear: UCLA fans shouldn’t have to suffer another season with Paus at the helm. His play is subpar, and his drunken-driving charges reflect badly on the program and the school. It’s time for both him, and UCLA, to move on past this unfortunate phase of the team’s history.

2. Head coach Bob Toledo should also be held accountable for putting the program in a terrible situation this year. The 2001 team was the one designed to go for it all; the big guns on defense – Marques Anderson, Ryan Nece and Robert Thomas – are all seniors. The team’s defense will sorely miss these guys and won’t be the force next year that they were this season.

This football team fell apart after the loss to Oregon. They looked embarrassingly unprepared for USC, and were consequently shut out. It seemed as if UCLA didn’t even have a game plan going into the big cross-town showdown.

Preparedness starts with the head coach. Coaching matters more in football than in any other sport, and there is no excuse for the constant late-season collapses by the Bruins.

He should have benched Paus weeks ago. Doing it now is too little, too late.

Whoever the new athletic director is next year should look around for a new head coach to replace Toledo – someone who focuses on improving rather than collapsing during the season.

3. UCLA needs to recruit players who specialize in beating Pac-10 teams. The Pac-10 offensive style of play is more of a West Coast offense, where teams run a lot of screens, crossing routes and post patterns.

The best type of defense to have against that kind of offense is one built with speed, not size.

The size of the players on UCLA’s defense is one reason that the Bruins are consistently able to beat teams like Alabama, Michigan and other big schools from the East and Midwest. These types of offenses are built more around the running game, where size of the defensive line matters a lot more.

UCLA needs to bring in faster defensive players to help keep up with the high-powered offenses featured in the Pac-10, and maybe they’ll finally be able to beat teams like Stanford, Oregon and USC.

Making these changes might turn an embarrassing Bruin team into legitimate contenders.

It’s been almost fifty years since UCLA won its sole national football title. Bruin fans are hungry for another one.

But have patience. Fundamental changes like the ones I’ve discussed above need to happen. This team needs to be turned upside down.

And then maybe that old football adage will work in UCLA’s favor, instead of annually haunting them.