bob chesney

This is no longer about sweet underdogs. This is no longer about smoke and mirrors.

This is as real as a Ty Dieffenbach rocket. This is as legit as a Wayne Knight rumble. This is as true as a Sammy Omosigho roar.

This is the best college football team in America.

This is UCLA.

The College Football Playoff selection committee has insulted them, their city has mostly ignored them, and few outside of the range of Bob Chesney’s wonderfully gravelly football voice has actually believed in them.

Wise up. Pay attention. This is evolving into one of the best stories in college football history, and it gets more eight-clappy by the week.

Less than a year removed from a 3-9 record, the Bruins improved to 9-0 Saturday with a dominating 34-20 victory over physical Minnesota at Huntington Bank Stadium.

Playing in a place where the Gophers had only lost once in two years, playing with a backup quarterback making his first road start — and still outgaining Minnesota by 170 yards and outscoring them 17-0 to end the game — this was the Bruins’ best win of the season.

They entered Saturday morning sitting only eighth in the initial CFP rankings, which is a joke, and one that should be corrected by next Tuesday night.

UCLA should be ranked No. 1. Right now. Period. That’s right, number one, ahead of those stinky two-loss SEC teams, ahead of those marginal one-loss SEC teams, ahead of unbeaten but untested Utah, ahead of unsettled Miami, ahead of every other team that may have better metrics but just don’t look the part.

UCLA aces the eye test. Watch this team for four quarters and marvel at the depth, the drive, the smarts and the shock.

For the last two months the Bruins’ defense has been the best in the country, their running game has been the best in the Big Ten, and they’re outscoring opponents 112-34 in the fourth quarter.

Heard enough? Just watch. Their specialty is that shock, witnessed Saturday at the start of the fourth quarter with the game locked in a 17-all tie after a Gopher touchdown dart from Drake Lindsey to a leaping George Rohl seemingly gave the home team all the momentum.

UCLA quarterback Ty Dieffenbach smiles after the Bruins’ win over Minnesota on Saturday.

(David Berding / Getty Images)

Next play from scrimmage? Dieffenbach hits sprinting Florida transfer Aidan Mizell down the middle for a 75-yard touchdown pass.

Boom, Bruins.

Minnesota used the ensuing possession to drive for a 36-yard field goal by Luke Drzewiecki to keep it close and regain some of that momentum.

Next play from scrimmage? Dieffenbach connects with an all-alone-again Mizell with another soaring downfield pass that became another 75-yard touchdown reception.

Boom, boom, Bruins

“Our guys battled,” said Chesney afterward. “They never wavered.”

They indeed never waver, a testament to this team’s experience, toughness and depth. The players have bought into this resilience such that they’re not afraid to state it as fact.

“We own the fourth quarter,” Dieffenbach said. “People can say whatever they want. We know what we have in this building.”

What they have is a team that their coach claims is guided by a single word.

“Belief, belief, belief,” Chesney said. “They believe in their coaches, and they ultimately believe in each other.”

UCLA coach Bob Chesney yells during the first half of the Bruins’ win against Minnesota.

(Abbie Parr / Associated Press)

If you close your eyes, you can hear Curt Cignetti saying all those things last season during Indiana’s miracle run to an unbeaten national title.

Chesney doesn’t particularly like being compared to Cignetti — they are two totally different coaches who don’t really know each other — but the similarity in the rise of the two programs is unmistakable.

Renowned basketball school. Forlorn football tradition. Enter dozens of veteran transfers and a culture-changing coach and — voila! — you have a title contender.

That UCLA has the best football team in the country at the moment obviously doesn’t guarantee they will win it all. They still have tough games at home against Illinois, on the road at Michigan, and back home against USC, followed by the Big Ten championship game. They will still have to earn a first-round bye and its accompanying home playoff game to have a chance.

But that chance seems charmed, as charmed as a second-string quarterback leading your team to a November road victory by completing just eight passes for an amazing 303 yards and three touchdowns.

“Every game, every play I think I’m going to keep gaining confidence, showing the guys I can play too,” Dieffenbach said.

The quarterback was complemented by the usual Knight numbers — 109 yards rushing and a touchdown — and an Omosigho-inspired defense that makes every big play.

Next up, the Illini, winners of four consecutive games, coming to the Rose Bowl Friday night in front of… who knows how many? So far the biggest Bruin skeptics appear to be their own fans, which last week led to some friendly fire from their famous former quarterback.

Speaking on Dallas radio’s The Ticket, Troy Aikman chided Bruin fans who are maintaining their recent tradition of avoiding the Rose Bowl.

“Little embarrassing that we were 7-0 going into last week’s game and, they shoot it pretty low [TV camera angles] so you can’t really tell when you’re watching the game, I’m told there was about 20-25,000 people at the game,” Aikman said of the Bruins’ win over Nevada. “So when you have a stadium at the Rose Bowl that holds over 100,000, 25,000, it may as well be empty as opposed to some other stadiums that maybe hold 40,000.

He added, “We’ve got to get people going to games, we’ve got to get them excited about it. And then you say, ‘Well, how do you get them excited? If 7-0 doesn’t get them excited, what will?’ I don’t know the answer to that.”

The Bruins drew just 24,611 to the Rose Bowl against Nevada, but it was a game held on Halloween afternoon. Wait until USC shows up two days after Thanksgiving. And give Bruin fans a break. This fast-moving bandwagon is still brand new.

“That air keeps getting thinner and thinner and thinner as you climb to the top of this mountain,” said Chesney.

Nine and oh and if Saturday is any indication, the best football team in America is just getting its second wind.

In the most complimentary way, I ask: What the heck was that first half, UCLA?

Yes, really. With Saturday’s 28-10 victory over Michigan State, Bob Chesney has the Bruins football team 7-0 for the first time since 2005. Still undefeated and still the only team in the Big Ten — and SEC — conferences that can say so. Ranked No. 9 in the nation and moving on up.

And so I ask: Two lost fumbles before halftime? Two drops? Two holding penalties? A meager 84 yards through the air and a modest 14-7 halftime lead? Against a majorly depleted Michigan State team fielding a freshman third-stringer at quarterback — that also lost two more of its best players to injury in the first half?

These Bruins are too good to be letting the wounded Spartans (2-6, 0-5 Big Ten) hang with them for even a half.

And yet, for a hot moment, doubt started to creep back in: Was this the day Chesney’s chariot turned back into a pumpkin? Was the last petal from the enchanted rose about to fall, this beauty of a season due to turn ugly? Was the fairy tale almost over?

No. The nation’s best second-half team gathered itself — “at halftime in the locker room, guys coming over, ‘Let’s go, man. We got you!” quarterback Ty Dieffenbach said — exerted its will and outscored the Spartans 14-0 in the third quarter. They mercifully ran out the clock with a commanding 28-7 lead going into the fourth and improved to a tidy 5-0 in the Big Ten.

It’s what Chesney’s teams do.

Last season at James Madison, the Dukes led the nation in second-half scoring, averaging 20.9 points per game.

And this charmed season at UCLA, the Bruins came into Saturday’s game averaging the second-most second-half points in the nation (20.8).

Being able to bear down and wear down opponents is a sign of a good team.

Being able to jump on them at the outset would be the sign of a great one.

Let’s fast-forward a year. You’ve stopped pinching yourself to make sure you aren’t dreaming and the Bruins — who were unranked and unheralded to start the season after so many years of ineptitude — really are in control of their own College Football Playoff destiny.

UCLA linebacker Donavyn Pellot celebrates with linebacker Sammy Omosigho, left, after a 67-yard interception return against Michigan State on Saturday.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

A year from now, you’ll have been conditioned to expect them to win these games, and you’ll no longer be worried about whether this was all a dream.

But you would be concerned about slow starts. You’d bemoan sluggish opening acts and fret about how that might bite the Bruins in the big games that are looming.

Chesney doesn’t have to make that imaginative leap into the future.

He’s worried about it now. And that’s why his Bruins are legitimately a team to contend with, because he’s coaching them to be that. He expects it: “When you walk on that field on Saturday, you walk out and know that you’ve done it the right way, and that’s how you treat something that’s important. Not special, but important.”

And so I ask: Why didn’t UCLA treat the first half like it was important Saturday?

“Two fumbles, two drops, two holding penalties? You can’t do it, you just can’t do it if you want to win really close games,” said Chesney, the first-year UCLA coach, who said he’d spend the week before the Bruins host Nevada in a nonconference Halloween game by emphasizing ball security at practice and that he’d watch the tape to determine what triggered the holding penalties.

“We’re taking three, four touchdowns off the board by doing that,” Chesney added. “Never going to let this happen again.”

UCLA can’t because it doesn’t have any room for error.

UCLA coach Bob Chesney works with players before a 28-10 win over Michigan State at the Rose Bowl on Saturday.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

If the Bruins win out, Chesney will have directed an underdog to a surprise CFP berth for the second consecutive season. But if the Bruins lose a game, it gets dicey.

Never mind the rows of recruits at Saturday’s victory, and forget for a moment about the fans who are slowly finding their way back to the Rose Bowl for Bruins football games. UCLA needs to continue to impress the computers and the pollsters and CFP committee members who could eventually determine UCLA’s fate if the Bruins don’t do it themselves.

And though no fault of Chesney’s, UCLA is playing a soft schedule. Per ESPN, the Bruins’ slate was the 51st easiest coming into the season and what remains of it is the 64th easiest.

And UCLA, which is winning behind a backup quarterback, which went 3-9 last season and which had so much ground to cover after starting the season outside of the top 25 — won’t likely get anyone’s benefit of the doubt if a first-half lull leads to a loss.

The Bruins are proving themselves probably the best team in the nation after halftime.

If they can do that, why not aim to be the best team in the nation?

Fours (quarters) up!?