Tom Ramsey, in his capacity as ESPN broadcaster, ran into a Mountain West Conference coach recently.

“Yeah, I remember you from the Rose Bowl,” the coach said.

“You must have a photographic memory,” the former UCLA quarterback said.

The coach then stumped Ramsey with this question:

“Why can’t UCLA win?”

Ramsey’s 1982 Bruins won that Rose Bowl. They gather regularly, as do other Bruins who played and won for Terry Donahue, parts of teams that won seven consecutive bowl games, went to three Roses in a eight-year span, and also two Fiestas and a Cotton.

In golf carts and restaurants and watering holes they bat it around, sometimes hard. UCLA has not won the Pac-12 since it was the Pac-10, when Cade McNown quarterbacked in 1998. That was also the Bruins’ last previous Rose Bowl appearance.

Nineteen years and three coaches ago.

“We get together and shake our heads,” said Mike Sherrard, the wide receiver. “We haven’t won a Rose Bowl since I was there. And I’m 54.”

Video: Will USC overlook UCLA?

On Saturday, the Bruins bring a 3-4 league record and a 5-5 overall record to the Coliseum to play USC. Next week they play Cal in Pasadena. If they win either game, they will be bowl-eligible, and Coach Jim Mora will laud their accomplishments, and old Bruins will grit their teeth.

“The bar has to be higher than what they think it is,” former quarterback David Norrie said. “The expectation level has to be greater.”

“Everybody goes to bowl games now,” Sherrard said. “And they can’t use facilities as an excuse anymore.”

Absolutely not. The Wasserman Football Center spans 75,000 square feet and cost $65 million. It stands guards over the practice field and caters to every player’s need. When the former Bruins got letters, signed by Mora, beseeching them for contributions, some were offended. Shouldn’t luxury follow winning?

Mora is 46-29 at UCLA, with one Pac-12 championship game appearance. After he won 18 of his first 27 league games, he has lost 15 of his next 25.

The current Bruins have put up some big numbers. For instance, they are 124th nationally in penalty yards, 116th in turnover margin, 122th in scoring defense, 129th in rush defense and 105th in rush offense.

“That’s hard to do,” Ramsey said. “But if you look at the top teams in the rankings, they have one thing in common. They’re solid on both lines. That’s been a problem at UCLA for a while.”

There is no headline running back at the school that once boasted DeShaun Foster, Freeman McNeil, Karim Abdul-Jabbar and Gaston Green.

Since Athletic Director Dan Guerrero fired Bob Toledo after a 7-5 regular season in 2002, the Bruins have visited a Whitman’s sampler of dog-eared bowl games. Three in San Francisco, two in Las Vegas, two in El Paso and one each in San Jose, Washington, San Antonio and San Diego.

“You just wonder if they’re too satisfied with where they are,” Norrie said. “Are they asking enough? With Coach Donahue, if any pass hit the ground in practice, there was legitimate cause for alarm.”

In the post-Toledo years, UCLA got two major gifts that likely won’t be duplicated.

USC was punched by a three-year probation in 2010 that cost the Trojans 30 scholarships. The Bruins never took advantage. USC returned to the Rose Bowl last year and will play in its second Pac-12 championship game in three years.

The other was quarterback Josh Rosen, who turned down Stanford and signed with the Bruins in 2015. He was hurt for parts of the past two seasons, but he will go high in the first round of next year’s draft, and UCLA has wasted his genius by changing its offenses and depriving him of playmakers and blockers.

The Bruins love to talk academic hardship, but that evaporates when you examine 10 consecutive losses to Stanford. The Cardinal has visited five New Year’s bowl games in the past seven seasons. It has become what UCLA once was.

Stanford also plays an identifiable brand of football. Donahue’s Bruins did, too. Incendiary on offense, swarming on defense.

“Homer Smith was my offensive coordinator for five years, Bob Field and Tom Hayes were there the whole time,” Norrie said. “We knew what to expect, every season. Now I don’t know what UCLA’s brand is.”

“We always had guys who were there for four or five years and learned how to play,” Sherrard said. “Now you have guys who want quick exposure, and sometimes they get exposed. We didn’t go there to think about the NFL.”

When the rest of college football thinks of UCLA, it uses past tense. The present is stressful, too.