The modern sports fan hive mind lacks a backbone.
The spineless creature operates on pure emotion in place of a brain.
When things are good, things are perfect – happiness is deserved, hope is everlasting and both the people and processes that made success happen in the first place could never do anything wrong.
But the animal loves nothing more than to hate.
When things are bad, the beast believes the opportunity cost would have had a 100% success rate. Everything is someone’s fault – they knew it would all fall apart this way from the beginning, and someone needs to be fired.
Like seemingly everyone else in Westwood, I like UCLA football’s hiring of coach Bob Chesney. But the worst thing for the Bruins – whether initiated by UCLA’s administration, donors or fans – would be to give Chesney a short leash.
For the second consecutive season, UCLA is trying to replicate Indiana’s bottle of lightning – and its first attempt ended in cartoon-skeleton silhouettes and broken glass.
Though I’m much more optimistic about Chesney’s upcoming tenure, Tino Sunseri – Indiana’s quarterbacks coach and co-offensive coordinator in 2024 and UCLA’s quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator to begin 2025 – departed after the Bruins’ 0-4 where they averaged 14.3 points per game against Utah, Northwestern and two Mountain West teams.
UCLA now has its own James Madison head coach. Although he has no Power Four experience, he is someone “who wins everywhere he goes.”
And the expectation is that said James Madison head coach needs to win immediately and “save” UCLA football.
Chesney isn’t at all an impending tragedy, but the expectations and emotions of the Bruin faithful’s herd mentality – which isn’t unlike most fanbases’ – is a recipe for disaster if they don’t ground themselves in reality.
People were candid about the disarray Kelly left UCLA in, and yet they only gave Foster 15 games to turn everything around.
Foster hardly got to play with a roster that was truly his and didn’t even have two full recruiting cycles. The players Foster did have embraced him from the second he was hired and through the weeks well after his firing.
It’s not like everyone was against Foster’s hiring from the onset.
The video of athletic director Martin Jarmond announcing Foster’s promotion to an enthusiastic UCLA football team in Wasserman Football Center was met with praise on social media – as was Foster’s emotional press conference in Pauley Pavilion, where the teary-eyed former Bruin running back said he was getting his dream job.
Foster made appearances at other UCLA sporting events, handed t-shirts out on Bruin Walk and brought back the Spring Showcase, all in his first few months.
And most important of all, he wasn’t Chip Kelly.
The Bruin faithful hate Kelly now – and I’m sure many celebrated when the former Bruin head coach of six seasons was fired from his post as the Las Vegas Raiders’ offensive coordinator.
I’m not saying they don’t have a good reason to despise Kelly, but I do have a problem with people acting like all that excitement, hope and promise brought by the college football offensive pioneer’s hiring in 2017 just didn’t exist.
The Bruins have just nine 10-win seasons since 1928 and just two this century – both belonging to Jim Mora. UCLA was Mora’s first head coaching gig, and his back-to-back bowl-game victories – in 2013’s Sun Bowl and 2014’s Alamo Bowl – are the program’s only bowl wins in consecutive seasons since Terry Donahue’s streak of seven straight from 1982 to 1989.
Yet Mora’s tenure ended – just like Kelly’s – with fans flying banners calling for his firing.
The coach wouldn’t get another chance at leading a program until UConn hired Mora following a 1-11 season in 2021. Mora’s back-to-back nine-win seasons are a program first – and if the Huskies win the 2025 Fenway Bowl on Dec. 27, it’ll be the program’s first 10-win season.
Then there’s Jarmond, who has also had his own share of banners and billboards calling for his firing.
I am not a big fan of Jarmond, but I think he’s blamed for far more than is his fault. Yes, it’s an athletic director’s job to shoulder figurehead responsibility, but right now, every bad thing that happens is because of him, and every good thing that happens is in spite of him.
Jarmond inherited sinking ships in a Kelly-led UCLA football program and a Pac-12 years behind in TV and media deals and networks.
I wasn’t a fan of conference realignment either, but Texas and Oklahoma had already displayed proof of concept in their move from the Big 12 to the SEC, announced in 2021, and who’s to say USC – or any other former Pac-12 program – doesn’t move to the Big Ten even if UCLA stays put?
It’s fair to criticize Jarmond for UCLA Athletics’ six straight years of overspending – a tab that’s accumulated to $219.55 million, per the Los Angeles Times. But it doesn’t seem fair to condemn Jarmond for moving UCLA to the Big Ten in an effort to increase media revenue, elect to let Kelly walk instead of firing the coach and paying his $4.27 million buyout – according to the LA Times – attempt to move from the Rose Bowl to SoFi Stadium to increase profits and largely go for unproven candidates in his head coaching hires across all of UCLA’s sports instead of handing out big contracts to big names.
UCLA men’s water polo won back-to-back national titles Dec. 7. Women’s basketball won last season’s Big Ten tournament and made its first-ever NCAA Final Four. Gymnastics finished last year’s NCAA championship in second place. Men’s tennis made its first NCAA championship since 2018 in 2025. Softball’s appearance in the 2025 Women’s College World Series was its ninth trip to Oklahoma City in 10 seasons. Baseball made the Men’s College World Series for the first time since 2013 last season. Men’s volleyball made its third-straight NCAA title match appearance in 2025. And women’s volleyball made its first NCAA tournament since 2021 on Nov. 30.
I’m not saying he deserves it, but Jarmond gets no credit for those successes and only foots all the criticism of football’s ineptitude.
Replacing Jarmond does not inherently mean his replacement would be better. It doesn’t automatically guarantee entrance into the College Football Playoff and men’s basketball Final Four appearances.
Frankly, it seems like LA Dodgers manager Dave Roberts is getting more credit than Jarmond for landing Chesney.
Yet if Chesney struggles, I guarantee you it’ll be pinned on Jarmond.
I like Chesney’s hiring.
And UCLA’s program successes have almost exclusively come under coaches that came to Westwood without any Power Four head coaching experience, or even any head coaching experience at all – as seen through current head coaches Cori Close, Adam Wright, Janelle McDonald, Kelly Inouye-Perez, Billy Martin, Stella Sampras Webster, John Savage and Alicia Um Holmes, as well as recent departures in John Speraw and Margueritte Aozasa.
If things go according to plan, the 2026 football season will be my last as a UCLA student – and I would love for a Chesney-led Bruin team to find its way to the College Football Playoff, Big Ten championship or even the Pop-Tarts Bowl that Notre Dame is too good for.
But expecting a program turnaround in a single season – even two or three seasons – just isn’t a good plan. UCLA would be like Wile E. Coyote trying something new every single time with no improvement.
If perfection is your standard, I’m sorry. UCLA isn’t going to become Saban-era Alabama tomorrow.
But there is once again hope around UCLA football – and hope is by no means a finite resource. It came with Mora, it came with Kelly, it came with Foster and it will come again, even if Chesney fails.
So enjoy it.
Believe in it – I know I will.
Just – if things go poorly – don’t act like you knew it wouldn’t work out from the start.
And please – even if he would never admit it – if Chesney needs time, I say give it to him.
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