LOS ANGELES – What more is there to say about UCLA’s prospective move from the Rose Bowl to SoFi Stadium? It’s a dumb, disappointing idea and darn near everyone is bummed about it.

But if Saturday night’s Big Ten game against former Pac-12 foe Washington was the last one the Bruins played at the historic stadium, I wanted to be there.

Wanted, of course, to admire the San Gabriel Mountains in all their glory, as the sun began to set a couple hours before kickoff, the most majestic backdrop in all of sports lit as though onstage.

Wanted to walk around the expanse of grass surrounding the stadium, smell the lamb chops and carne asada in Lot H, to chew over the present circumstance with some of the stakeholders who lined up to high-five players as they marched into the stadium but who obviously hadn’t been consulted about the proposed move.

Wanted to commiserate with Bruins fans, who love this historic haunt in its splendid setting, and who would – or will – be heartbroken if their Bruins succeed in breaking their lease that was supposed to last until 2044. If they sign the new one at SoFi, where they’ll be the third-most-important tenant behind the NFL’s Rams and Chargers. Third, and by a long shot.

Wanted to take the temperature of a scorned fan base, or what’s left of it after an uninspiring decade – seven losing seasons, five head coaches – and little fanfare to supplement the faltering on-the-field product.

Going into Saturday, the Bruins were averaging 37,099 fans per home game, on pace for a record low dating back to 1982, when they moved their home games from The Coliseum they shared with USC to Pasadena. It’s been a precipitous slide for a program that used to regularly average between 60,000 to 70,000 fans, even in mediocre seasons.

So the UCLA supporters who shared their thoughts Saturday were not enraged but resigned. Loyalists who have gotten used not only to watching UCLA falter on the field – my goodness, that botched trick play that resulted in a Washington touchdown before halftime Saturday!? – but also to having their longtime traditions dishonored.

Like back in 2013, UCLA excused alumni cheerleader Geof Strand after 38 years of cajoling fans into cheering for the home team.

The man with hundreds of intoxicating stories and a few well-known cheers once helped former UCLA assistant coach Jerry Long persuade Pasadena and the Rose Bowl to bring on the Bruins – an unpopular idea initially. And then, in 2013, the athletic department told him his services were no longer needed, that it planned to focus more on corporations than individual fans, thinking that would pay off, he said.

But I heard several times in the past couple weeks about how much pep and excitement that Bruins’ home games are missing without Strand, the 1971 B-R-U-I-N alumnus, Mr. 8-clap. The guy in the blue-and-gold paperboy cap who volunteered his time – the school paid him only in “all the pom-poms I could eat” he joked – to “make sure people, even if we lost the game, were happy to have been there and to have been a part of the game.”

And in the past couple years, UCLA yanked its football team out of the Pac-12 and plopped it down in the Big Ten, introducing new conference rivals, strangers who are mostly long plane flights away, in the middle of the country or all the way on the East Coast.

Now the Bruins want to ditch the Rose Bowl for SoFi, where they project increased revenue – never mind the personal cost, the loss of identity, the widespread opposition to the school’s decision to punt on the type of pageantry and prestige that on Saturday brought people from as far as Phoenix and South Dakota, San Diego and, obviously, Seattle.

“We’ve never been here before, and we heard this might be the last time we could come, so we’re making it a bucket-list thing,” said Jerry Durfee, a South Dakotan and dad of Washington defensive end Zach Durfee.

Mom Renae: “We wanted to be able to say we’ve been to the Rose Bowl.”

That’s the thing, fans said over and over, wants to play at the Rose Bowl – so why wouldn’t UCLA want to too?

“I’ve always felt privileged that UCLA could play in the Rose Bowl,” said San Dimas’ Ray Holt, who was tailgating with pal Matt Nisco, both of them 1984 UCLA graduate dentists and Rose Bowl regulars who are seriously thinking about watching games at home instead next season.

“Since we joined the Big Ten, we’ve met a lot of people from schools that have come over … and they’re like, ‘We’re here because we never thought in our whole life we would ever see the Rose Bowl!’”

“Every game – Indiana, Iowa – people want to come out here to see the iconic stadium – and that’s home!” said Jackson, manning a grill and flanked by his wife, Michelle and Hayden, both also UCLA grads.

Maybe, Hayden (class of 2025) said, if UCLA was moving its football home games to campus, leaving the Rose Bowl would make sense. Otherwise, though, no.

“In the end, what’s far?” asked UCLA sophomore Siddharth Bommareddy. “People have been going here for years already, it’s part of our identity.”

“There will still be a struggle to fill up the stadium [at SoFi],” said Eric Plezia, a sophomore. “Just moving a little closer to campus is not going to fix anything, it’s not going to fix the attendance. People will show up if the program is good of if the stadium is on campus.

“But this solves nothing. It’s only for the program to make more money which i think is selfish and does not consider fans’ experience.”

Freshman Olivia LeBlanc said “secretly” she wouldn’t mind watching games at SoFi, but at the same time, while “SoFi is modernized and nice, here it’s adorable and iconic and I’m gonna miss it.”

“Yes,” Strand said, “you had to pay a price to go to the Rose Bowl. But as I would say over and over, ‘Look where you are, 101 out of 101 people in the world would change places with you in a heartbeat. And you get to do it six or seven times a year, with people around you who are all on your side. You cannot find a better place.’ ”