Brigham Young vs. UCLA.

Huuuuuuuge.

It's fitting, indeed, that it's being played at the biggest venue in college football. Not the biggest in seating capacity, although it's close. Just the . . . biggest.

The Rose Bowl.

Granddaddy's home field. In the heart of the Arroyo Seco. With the San Gabriel Mountains as a backdrop and ghosts of the game as bedfellows. And Brookside Golf Course's fairways - on Nos. 1 and 2 - as a parking lot.

Perfect.

It's a hallowed place, although I'll admit I used to hit 9-irons into the old bowl off an adjacent tee at Brookside, from right next to the sign that read: Do not hit golf balls into the Rose Bowl. It's all right, I was a local and took the place for granted. If you'd never been there before, and you had a chance to walk across the turf, you might pause a moment to reach down and touch the grass in order to feel a bit of college football history. Super Bowl history, too.

OK, this isn't that big.

But for BYU, it's about as meaningful as any game gets.

It's not often the Cougars get a shot at this kind of bounce this early in the season, or anytime in any season, playing the 13th-ranked team in the country at that team's place. It's the exact kind of early opportunity for which they cry, being lost as they are in the competitive no-man's land of the Mountain West, in a league that has little television exposure and even less respect from those who vote in the polls.

Beating New Mexico and Wyoming may mean something to somebody, but only to those whose task - or fate - it is to do so. Everyone on the outside just pats the victors on the head and skootches them in the britches and smiles in condescension. Isn't that cute.

Beating the Bruins, though, especially this particular highly ranked collection of them, would mean something near and far. The college landscape wouldn't shift, but the BCS picture would suddenly include a team that largely has been ignored by those who are empowered to crown college football's beauty queens.

It would mean something for the Cougars that Bronco Mendenhall has openly pursued from the beginning: bits of national recognition. Those bits, properly tended, could germinate into something beyond what winning the Mountain West offers.

A BCS bowl.

BYU, then, has to beat UCLA.

Last year's Cougars fumbled lesser chances against Arizona and Boston College, and, on that account, 13-0 was downgraded to 11-2. The blessings and wonders reaped by Boise State descended, for BYU, into a real good showing in the Vegas Bowl.

Nice, not great.

The Arizona wrong has already been righted. Now, opportunity is turning its heal and batting its eyes at the Cougars. It is standing in profile, all leggy and sultry, in a dark, fog-shrouded doorway, waiting for a bold suitor with enough wherewithal to take forthright action.

Honor Code office on Line 1.

You get the drift.

If the Cougars are good enough to take down the Wildcats and the Bruins, who on the remaining schedule should defeat them? The two greatest threats, TCU, also a BCS threat, and Utah, have to come to Provo to do their business.

On the other hand, UCLA could be a dangerous temptress, could be Marlene Dietrich with two fists of stone.

That's opportunity's flipside. It could take a socket wrench and beat you - and your grand intentions - upside the melon.

Is the nonconference risk worth it? Or would BYU be better off in safety's embrace, just putting a whuppin' on Eastern Washington? Oops, no, that comes later.

In the run-up to Saturday's game, the Cougars have said they are pumped to play UCLA. Linebacker Bryan Kehl was darn near sky high over the chance, saying after last week's triumph against Arizona that he expected "another beautiful day" in the Rose Bowl.

"I'm excited about it," he said.

Mendenhall was earnestly and publicly respectful of the Bruins, but, privately, he views playing and beating UCLA in the same light as every other step forward his program has taken over the past two-plus seasons. If certain plans and principles are followed and adhered to, the result is victory.

That's the power in his brand of coaching - getting his players to really believe that if they do A) and B) and C), they'll get D) and E).

The whole process is like an apple hitting the ground after falling from a tree. He doesn't reference Sir Isaac Newton's works. He goes to LaVell Edwards'. BYU's record books underscore his points: wins over Miami, Notre Dame, Penn State, Texas, Oklahoma, Michigan, among others.

Mendenhall doesn't even like to acknowledge any difference between BCS leagues and non-BCS leagues. He considers such characterizations "barriers" that he does not want to erect. "It's irrelevant to me," he said.

He's fully aware, though, how college football goes, the politics and the pragmatics. He seeks - and he'll take - the rewards anew, whatever they may be.

But, competitively speaking, it doesn't matter to him who or where the Cougars play.

It only matters - in a huuuuuuuge way - to everyone else.

gmonson@sltrib.com