The college football season is still months away, but it's that time of the year when rankings and projections are already being made.

The Big Ten is bound to be another gauntlet this year after five teams from the conference made last year's College Football Playoff.

UCLA missed out on a bowl game in Year 1 under DeShaun Foster, coming up short by just one win. So far, experts don't seem to be convinced that bringing in Nico Iamaleava was enough for the Bruins to take a major leap. It should, however, put them in a better spot than they were last year.

As part of his "college football bowl projections," 247Sports' Brad Crawford has UCLA slated to play Utah in the Los Angeles Bowl, the last bowl game the Bruins played in and former UCLA head coach Chip Kelly's last game at the helm.

Kelly had led the Bruins to an 8-5 record that year, capped off with a 35-22 win over Boise State in the local bowl game.

While UCLA is now in the Big Ten, the Los Angeles Bowl, which is a Pac-12/Mountain West matchup) can still feature the former Pac-12 teams that left the conference last year for one more season.

Ironically, UCLA kicks off its 2025 season with Utah, set to be played at home on Aug. 30. A potential bowl meet-up could be exciting, especially if the season opener ends up being a nail-biter.

Meanwhile, Crawford has UCLA's bitter rival, USC, playing Kansas State in the Alamo Bowl, which last year featured No. 17 BYU and No. 23 Colorado, so he must think highly of the Trojans' chances of taking a significant step forward this coming season.

UCLA has made just two bowl appearances in the last seven years. It hasn't reached 10 wins since the Jim Mora days, when More led the Bruins to three straight nine-plus win seasons in his first three years at the helm, including back-to-back 10-win campaigns in 2013-14 and 2014-15 that were each capped off by wins in the Sun Bowl and Alamo Bowl, respectively.

A bowl game almost seems necessary for coach Foster in Year 2, especially now that he has a quarterback of Iamaleava's caliber.

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