BRIDGET O’BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Senior long
snapper Jeff Grau (right) goes over his class
schedule withassistant director of academic services Ed
Kezirian.
By Will Whitehorn
Daily Bruin Reporter
One aspect of Bruin football head coach Bob Toledo’s
game-time job is deciding when to declare an offensive lineman an
eligible receiver. The main challenge for Ed Kezirian, assistant
director of academic services at UCLA, is making sure those linemen
are eligible ““ period.
“Everybody (in academic services) works as a team ““
I’m a small part of the total team effort,” Kezirian
said modestly. “We have a lot of good people, and we provide
a lot of good resources to help the student-athletes compete with
the outstanding students here at UCLA.”
Kezirian, a Fresno native and UCLA alumnus, is entering his 20th
season on the staff of UCLA football, the last nine of which he has
spent tracking and maintaining the academic prowess of his
student-athletes.
For the last three seasons Kezirian has been responsible for the
academic maintenance of the football team, and in the past has
mentored such future NFL all-pro linemen as Irv Eatman and Jonathan
Ogden, the starting tackle for the world-champion Baltimore
Ravens.
UCLA currently ranks second in the Pac-10 in graduation rates
for football players, with 63 percent of their four-year freshmen
graduating on time, according to the most recent NCAA statistics.
This statistic was magnified nationally recently when the Knight
Commission proposed that the NCAA bar universities incapable of
graduating at least 50 percent of their players on time from
postseason play.
Confessing that he wasn’t entirely familiar with the
Knight Commission report, Kezirian did stress that there should be
numerous considerations before implementing such a penalty on a
university.
Kezirian also pointed out that regardless of future actions from
the NCAA, UCLA’s academic success in the athletic department
left them in no danger of the proposed sanction, asserting some
recent Bruin success stories in support.
“Ryan Wilkins would be the one that I would say was able
to excel the most,” said Kezirian of the former Bruin wide
receiver who will start at the UCLA School of Law this fall.
“Three of our 14 seniors this past year were in the College
of Engineering (graduated offensive tackles Josh and Micah Webb and
former safety Jason Zdenek). Those guys blew my mind.”
Senior center Troy Danoff describes Kezirian as an integral part
of his academic success and an influential figure away from the
gridiron.
“Both my parents love him,” Danoff said.
“He’s always updating them about my grades and how
things are going.”
Kezirian has been a fixture at UCLA since 1972 when he
transferred from Reedley Junior College near Fresno. After a
productive career on the Bruin offensive line, Kezirian continued
his career in college football and returned to Westwood in 1982 to
assist former UCLA coach Terry Donahue ““ a recent college
football hall of fame inductee.
His peers on the coaching staff acknowledge that
Kezirian’s deep Bruin roots give him immediate credibility
with the players.
“He’s got all that experience; he was a player here,
he was a coach here,” UCLA wide receiver coach Ron Caragher
said. “And so he is someone I think our players can confide
in.”
Kezirian is quick to credit his former boss, Donahue, with his
successful track record, both on the sidelines and in the study
halls.
“(Donahue) created all the opportunities for me to coach
college football,” Kezirian said, addressing his close ties
to the current general manager of the NFL’s San Francisco
49ers. “He helped me transition from coaching into the
administration here, where I’ve been for the past nine
years.”
However, Kezirian was quick to deflect the notion of leaving the
Bruins to rejoin Donahue in the 49er front office in any
capacity.
“Well, you never say never,” said Kezirian, who has
been courted in the past by other universities. “But UCLA has
been really good to me. I have a son who is a sophomore here
athletically (sophomore tight end Blane), and (athletic director)
Peter Dalis has been very good to me. It’s not like I’m
on the phone trying to get a hold of Coach Donahue.”
Kezirian’s incessant commitment to the Bruin community,
along with continued success academically, will go a long way in
debunking the national conception of UCLA as merely a “jock
school.”
With reports from Hannah Gordon, Daily Bruin Reporter.