Conference Pacific-8 AP No. 15 Offensive coordinator Homer Smith (1st year) | Coaches No. 17 (T) 1972 record 8–3 (5–2 Pac-8) | |
Head coach Pepper Rodgers (2nd year) | ||
The 1972 UCLA Bruins football team represented University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the 1972 college football season. Members of Pacific-8 Conference, the Bruins were led by second-year head coach Pepper Rodgers and played their home games at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
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The new quarterback this season was Mark Harmon, a junior college transfer and son of Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon. In his first game for the Bruins, Harmon led the wishbone offense and gained a late night upset of top-ranked Nebraska at the Coliseum. An 18-point underdog, UCLA was never behind; Nebraska had five turnovers but fought back to tie the score before halftime at ten and again early in the fourth quarter at seventeen. In their final drive, Harmon drove UCLA into field goal range and Efren Herrera made a 29-yarder in the final half minute for the 20–17 win. It halted the two-time defending national champion Huskers' unbeaten streak at 32 games and vaulted the previously unranked Bruins (2–7–1 in 1971) to eighth in the AP Poll, as Nebraska slid to tenth.
Two weeks later, the Bruins lost at home to Michigan, but then won six straight and improved to 8–1 overall. An upset loss to Washington at Husky Stadium in Seattle and an expected one to top-ranked rival USC in the Coliseum ended UCLA's season at 8–3. The Pac-8 runner-up, they were ranked fifteenth in the final AP poll.