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Posted
39 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

2, 3, 1, x, x, x

1,3,2

Left has a mischievous grin- she'll do some butt stuff.

Right has tigols, obviously fake, but I'm not gonna dock points for that in this age bracket.

Center, I can't really get a read on her rack but she'd get it too.

 

 

  • Haha 2
Posted (edited)
On 9/13/2025 at 2:59 PM, BurntEyes said:

 

This. 

UCLA lost to a state agricultural college. One from New Mexico. At home. When heavily favored. By 25 points. And it wasn't that close.

It was absolutely worse. 

Think of Texas losing by 25 at DKR to West Virginia Agricultural College of Meth and Weed. 

they lost to UNM

New Mexico State (the Aggies) is the land grant in New Mexico......losing to them would have sucked worse though 

Edited by ButtFumble
  • Drool 1
Posted
2 hours ago, satyanash said:

 

Mandel was a Chip Kelly mouthpiece and is still running PR for him. This isn’t completely inaccurate, but UCLA is not an impossible job. Mora was pulling classes around the Top 10 and attendance was decent in the early 2010s. In the rev share era, it should be a mid-tier B10 job. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, Jimmy Two Times said:

Mandel was a Chip Kelly mouthpiece and is still running PR for him. This isn’t completely inaccurate, but UCLA is not an impossible job. Mora was pulling classes around the Top 10 and attendance was decent in the early 2010s. In the rev share era, it should be a mid-tier B10 job. 

 

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Posted
1 hour ago, Jimmy Two Times said:

Mandel was a Chip Kelly mouthpiece and is still running PR for him. This isn’t completely inaccurate, but UCLA is not an impossible job. Mora was pulling classes around the Top 10 and attendance was decent in the early 2010s. In the rev share era, it should be a mid-tier B10 job. 

You can’t look back before NIL to try and rationalize a program. If they don’t have the NIL or desire to push big time NIL they won’t be successful in the Big 10 

Posted
12 minutes ago, BurntOrange&White said:

You can’t look back before NIL to try and rationalize a program. If they don’t have the NIL or desire to push big time NIL they won’t be successful in the Big 10 

That’s why I clarified that UCLA can be competitive in the rev share era. The donor base isn’t actually that bad, it’s just been completely disengaged by Kelly and Foster. They’ve fundraised well for facilities in the past and have plenty of basketball NIL. 

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Posted
48 minutes ago, Vic Mackey said:

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As a Berkeley grad, I'm no defender of UCLA, but if I were to pin the Pac 12's demise on any school, it's USC, and in reality it's just Larry Scott. UCLA always felt like they were just along for the ride in the B1G move. 

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Posted
4 minutes ago, LTbear said:

As a Berkeley grad, I'm no defender of UCLA, but if I were to pin the Pac 12's demise on any school, it's USC, and in reality it's just Larry Scott. UCLA always felt like they were just along for the ride in the B1G move. 

Larry Scott : Bob Bowlsby
USC : Texas
UCLA : OU

Posted
16 hours ago, satyanash said:

 

UCLA has money, it's just getting their deep pockets to part with it.

Their bag men supported hoops in the past. It's a hard sell, but the people they've got in place now don't give a shit.

Posted

Bruce Feldman: UCLA football imploded in 3 weeks, but the Bruins’ problems go way back. How do they fix it?

Quote

LOS ANGELES — Clusters of weary fans trudged into the twilight, rumbling frustrations by halftime. Meanwhile, the stragglers lingering in the hollowed stands of the Rose Bowl watched in disbelief as New Mexico — New Mexico — ballooned the lead to 25 before the clock bled out and Bruins in uniform appeared numb to the humiliation.

DeShaun Foster hunched over, palms pressed to his knees as he wore the look of a man awaiting the inevitable. The Lobos had never outclassed a Big Ten team until UCLA ensured their first win came easily last Friday. That would’ve been the moment for fury — headsets spiked and clipboards splintered. But UCLA’s sideline remained eerily still, coaches gazing blankly through a blowout defeat that seemed to have become routine.

The inevitable didn’t wait. A season only three weeks old — and Foster’s dream job just 15 games young — imploded with the head coach’s dismissal two days later. With interim Tim Skipper steering the wreckage, the Bruins flounder at 0-3, carrying nothing but the dead weight of national mockery. A program once draped in glamour has curdled into parody — 11 years removed from its last 10-win season, averaging 44,000 fans in a 90,000-seat Rose Bowl and written off by its own alumni as a “sinking ship.”

The Bruins flirted with the AP Top 25 just two seasons ago. Now, the UCLA brand wanders aimlessly, its patches of success fleeting reminders of what’s possible. “I don’t think they realize what they are,” a former staffer said, “and that’s what kills them.”

Though athletic director Martin Jarmond promised UCLA faithful that “this is not what Bruin football is going to be” shortly after Foster’s firing, the rot seems already rooted deep in the Rose Bowl’s soil, the cracks rupturing when former head coach Chip Kelly opted to leave in February 2024, assuming offensive coordinator duties at Ohio State. UCLA now appears a program stripped bare, with donors lacking incentive and alumni wincing in silence.

In a college football landscape racing forward, the Bruins have been largely mired in mediocrity since the days of shoulder pads and neck rolls. “Coach Foster was trying really hard to get everybody on the same page of what we needed to do but unfortunately, we just couldn’t get it right,” a Bruins assistant coach said, “and the product on the field wasn’t what it should be.”

Nineteen months earlier, Jarmond shocked players at a team meeting by bringing out Foster, announcing to them first that the Bruins great was their new head coach. Players leapt from their chairs to mob the former Bruins assistant, who less than two weeks earlier had left to become the Las Vegas Raiders running backs coach.

For a program reeling from Kelly’s abrupt exit, Jarmond saw Foster as the ideal fit at a very awkward time, when his options were limited. Arizona’s Jedd Fisch, a former UCLA offensive coordinator, and Oregon State’s Jonathan Smith, who grew up near the Rose Bowl, had taken new jobs by then.

Perhaps Jarmond could’ve hired Barry Odom, fresh off a 9-5 season at UNLV. Or rolled the dice on another Group of 5 head coach. Instead, he chose a UCLA Hall of Fame running back, who was a living link to the program’s past, a Bruins lifer draped in the affection of fans, alumni and former players. In a locker room gasping for a spark, Foster struck the match.

But while Foster had a lot of institutional knowledge of UCLA, he had never been a coordinator before and was in a completely new role at a place that had (and has) problems with alignment and bureaucracy and was entering its first season in the Big Ten.

The biggest issue with UCLA football, according to more than a half-dozen sources The Athletic spoke to for this story, some of whom were granted anonymity in exchange for their candor, has been a lack of financial resources. The Bruins had never been USC when it came to money or commitment to football, and UCLA has piled up more than $200 million in athletic department debt in recent years. But that disparity — fractures of which showed throughout much of this century — became much more of a problem in 2021, once name, image and likeness arrived.

Consistent success already eluded the Bruins, whether under Karl Dorrell, Rick Neuheisel, Jim Mora or Kelly. UCLA, which last won a conference title in 1988, finished ranked in the top 15 only once in the past 27 seasons, after a 10-3 season with Mora in 2014. The Bruins hastened the demise of the Pac-12 by following USC to the Big Ten, lining their pockets but saddling the football program with a new set of challenges.

UCLA needed a new coach to lead it into the conference after Kelly stepped down after six seasons, which yielded the program’s second three-season run with at least eight wins in 40 years, but also emphasized the Bruins’ shortcomings.

“Looking at the Chip regime through clear eyes, it was a major rebuild that took too long, at first,” one of Kelly’s assistants told The Athletic. “Then, we really turned the corner and were a top-20 program over the last three years, which is all you really can ask for any non-blue blood.”

But, the assistant continued, UCLA wanted more. The fans weren’t engaged — “Chip’s not the biggest fan engagement guy.” It became apparent UCLA folks were tired of Kelly, who didn’t replicate the success he’d had at Oregon before leaving for the NFL, and Kelly, program sources said, was tired of the entire dynamic, especially of Jarmond, who was hired two years after the coach arrived.

“You’re trying to sell the players on getting a great education and we can develop you as a player, but we didn’t have any money to pay them, and we were losing out on players,” said one position coach from Kelly’s staff at UCLA.

Kelly, who was known more for his offensive scheming than his recruiting, signed classes according to 247Sports, ranked Nos. 19, 44, 31, 25, 29 and 25, a drop-off from Mora, his predecessor, whose classes consistently were ranked in the teens. When the program started winning again under Kelly, it was mostly done with transfers and under-recruited high school prospects.

Last spring, Foster was proud to point out that the Bruins had five players taken in the NFL Draft, more than any other college program in the state. They had two more the previous year, including first-rounder Laiatu Latu. Five of those seven draft picks transferred in.

“Our evaluations hit, and we were able to ride that for multiple years because the market was us vs. the NFL,” said a former UCLA staffer.

It was a gut punch for UCLA after the NCAA transfer rules were amended, allowing for players to transfer more than once without having graduated. It became harder to retain players. UCLA had no money for safety Kamari Ramsey, but USC did. Quarterback Dante Moore, a five-star and the highest-ranked recruit Kelly landed at UCLA, transferred in December 2023.

“Two cornerstone talents,” the former staffer said, “and if we can’t hold onto these guys, what are we doing?” Moore, now the starting quarterback for No. 6 Oregon, didn’t end up getting even half the amount of NIL money he was expecting to receive from UCLA, multiple sources briefed on the deal told The Athletic. Brandon Grier, Moore’s agent, declined to comment.

In 2023, when UCLA beat arch-rival USC 38-20 at the Coliseum, a Bruins source said their team had $400,000 on the field that day, while Trojans players were getting more than 30 times that amount. Two weeks later, USC hired away UCLA’s first-year defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn by offering to double his salary to more than $2 million, plus a $500,000 housing stipend, after he produced the No. 1 defense in the Pac-12.

“They’re unwilling to finance their expectations, and it’s been that way for some time,” said Neuheisel, the former star quarterback at UCLA who went 21-29 while coaching the Bruins from 2008-11. “They’ve been up against it financially, and I don’t know why. I don’t understand why they don’t see football as a breadwinner.”

Six months after winning hearts with his emotional introduction to the Bruins, Foster’s next viral turn came with none of the charm. At Big Ten media days, the rookie head coach stalled, words deserting him for about 15 seconds during his opening statement — an uncomfortable debut for a figure long regarded as unflappable.

The 2024 Bruins mirrored that stumble to start the year, limping to 1-5 before salvaging four of their final six games. Foster fired offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy and offensive line coach Juan Castillo, replacing them with Tino Sunseri and Andy Kwon, who were two decades younger. Foster also tapped Khary Darlington, a longtime NFL scout whom he knew from their days with the Carolina Panthers, as UCLA’s GM.

In April, the Bruins scored their splashiest win by landing touted Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava after he left Knoxville. Iamaleava didn’t get a raise from his mid-$2 million salary to come home to the West Coast, program sources told The Athletic, but he was still receiving payment between $1 million and $2 million.

Iamaleava’s arrival set off a chain reaction of commitments as UCLA piled up 14 transfers and secured four four-star linemen, rocketing UCLA’s recruiting class to No. 21 in the country. By comparison, UCLA had managed just three four-stars in the two years prior combined. Westwood felt the renovation fever, though it came with the chaos of 57 new faces and Iamaleava not arriving until after spring football.

Foster carried himself with smooth assurance at Big Ten media days in July. But preseason camp came wrapped in lockdown mode: Reporters were limited to watching players stretch and player interviews were a rare currency. Foster dismissed complaints, insisting that practice footage only armed opponents with intel, doubling down with: “If you win games, you’re marketed.”

Results quickly betrayed the rhetoric. UCLA was walloped by Utah at the Rose Bowl, buried early at UNLV and outright steamrolled by 15 1/2-point underdog New Mexico, which gashed UCLA for nearly 300 yards.

Thirty-six hours later, Jarmond cut Foster loose, and the Bruins stared at rock bottom. Defensive coordinator Ikaika Malloe “mutually parted ways” with UCLA, the defense ranked 117th nationally and conceding 36 points per game. A winless season suddenly appears on the table, and certainly in the discourse, for the Bruins.

Some close to the program said Foster, 45, was never an X’s and O’s guy, the opposite of Kelly. And according to one parent of a player who recently transferred, Foster had trouble implementing his motto of DRE: Discipline, respect and enthusiasm.

“You’ve got to take it a step further,” said the parent. “You’ve got to enforce it, and if people aren’t following your creed and they’re not living it and respecting it, then there needs to be consequences. And that was the issue. … If you can’t practice what you preach, and you can’t control the players to have that DRE culture, then it’s all talk and no walk.”

But the shame seems to cut deepest among the alumni, who still summon the image of a roaring Rose Bowl — and now direct their frustration at players who appear unfazed by vacant concrete and scattered crowds.

“You should be embarrassed that you got people coming to the game who are leaving at halftime. That should say something about your level of play,” said Jerry Johnson, a wide receiver at UCLA from 2008 to 2012. “But the guys now … they might just be like, ‘OK, this is how the Rose Bowl is.’ No it’s not, sir. … It bothers the alumni more than it bothers the current players, seemingly.”

The Bruins assistant coach said, like several other former staffers, that the problems at UCLA go far beyond Foster. “They have made a huge push to get kids like Nico,” said a current Bruins staffer. “I would say this place needs to see it to believe in it. It’s not one of those places where it’s willing to put its money there before the success has been shown. Until you get people on the same page, it’s gonna struggle.”

Said an assistant coach from the Kelly regime: “I just don’t think that the backing from the administration is good at all. They’re always kind of a step behind. They don’t know the NIL landscape.” Jarmond arrived at UCLA in 2020 after three years as Boston College’s AD. He has been heavily criticized for his handling of the football program, but said he is confident in his ability to hire a championship coach.

UCLA is expected to use more than $13 million of revenue share money toward the football program annually, which is similar to what SEC and other Big Ten schools have allocated. Neuheisel isn’t convinced the Bruins necessarily will be on a level playing field because other programs will help facilitate third-party deals that offer additional funds for players.

“I worry that UCLA’s football program, based on the past, has not been as forthcoming with the football side of things and with the rest of the department,” he said. “As the football coach there, it was just incredibly frustrating fighting for every little thing. And I love UCLA, it just breaks my heart.”

Said Donovan Carter, a UCLA defensive tackle from 2008-2012: “Respectfully, we hear about the team across town, the things they doing, and their class next year is crazy. They got these people raising money to get that class.”

The biggest reason for optimism in some corners at UCLA is change — not in the athletic department but in administration. Julio Frenk took over as UCLA’s chancellor on Jan. 1 after spending the past decade at the University of Miami, where he oversaw an enormous shift in the Canes football program that included hiring Mario Cristobal.

“It’s 100 percent doable,” said one UCLA staffer when asked if he believed that the Bruins can have a powerhouse football program in this era. “But it’s gonna take an overhaul to fix. … That’s where the challenge is for Martin and those guys over there — you gotta make sure that this hire has to be right.

“I am genuinely excited by the new chancellor hire and what he did with Miami football. … Miami was a far cry from who they were in the early 2000s when they were The U, and now all of a sudden, they’re back to being a top-10 team and Hard Rock Stadium is full again. … That’s what you can hope to try to steal some of that magic, get some of that here, and fix this thing that we have.”

 

Posted
On 9/15/2025 at 10:46 AM, Saint Tacky said:

So who are the coaching candidates being tossed around? 

So pick 3 of the best possible candidates and then imagine them getting Brent Brennen instead. 

Posted
On 9/15/2025 at 12:27 PM, Js1 said:

Larry Scott : Bob Bowlsby
USC : Texas
UCLA : OU

Eh.. I would say no. OU is still trying like hell to be great but playing with a short stack. I think UCLA has kind of given up and is just there for the paycheck.  

Posted
On 9/14/2025 at 1:49 PM, HRSchenker said:

I can't believe they fired this guy

A reporter should've followed up with, "What do the initials L.A. stand for?" to see if Foster knew.

I have my doubts

Posted

UCLA should hire Deion Sanders.  He's proven to be able to revive a completely apathetic program.  Plus Prime in LA would be entertaining.

Posted
1 minute ago, Plorant said:

UCLA should hire Deion Sanders.  He's proven to be able to revive a completely apathetic program.  Plus Prime in LA would be entertaining.

Meh...he'll be the same flash-in-the-pan he was at CU. They'd be better off hiring one of Lanning's coordinators, IMO.

 

Posted
2 minutes ago, DFW Horn said:

Meh...he'll be the same flash-in-the-pan he was at CU. They'd be better off hiring one of Lanning's coordinators, IMO.

 

I don't think wins is the concern.  Just something to revitalize the fan base and program.  I agree that the Oregon coordinators will be much sought after.  Will Stein is one we should be curious about with his Longhorn/Lake Travis connections.

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Posted
49 minutes ago, Plorant said:

I don't think wins is the concern.  Just something to revitalize the fan base and program.  I agree that the Oregon coordinators will be much sought after.  Will Stein is one we should be curious about with his Longhorn/Lake Travis connections.

I think they are going to have to settle for a G5 coach who is desperate to get to the P2 level. No top coaching candidate is going to touch this job with a 10 foot pole. 

Posted
1 minute ago, Vertigo said:

I think they are going to have to settle for a G5 coach who is desperate to get to the P2 level. No top coaching candidate is going to touch this job with a 10 foot pole. 

Generally I think this is correct, but when the coaching carousel starts after reg season is over weird shit can happen.  

 

Tosh Lupoi as a HC brings the LULZ

Posted
On 9/15/2025 at 11:33 AM, DFW Horn said:

UCLA has money, it's just getting their deep pockets to part with it.

Their bag men supported hoops in the past. It's a hard sell, but the people they've got in place now don't give a shit.

Decline is a choice

(btw did grad school at UCLA, so I keep an eye on this a bit)

Posted
1 hour ago, Plorant said:

UCLA should hire Deion Sanders.  He's proven to be able to revive a completely apathetic program.  Plus Prime in LA would be entertaining.

I'm sure they would love to. Is that even a lateral move at this point? I don't see Deon taking on another apathetic rock bottom situation. If he leaves it'll be for a much better job than UCLA.

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Posted
16 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

Generally I think this is correct, but when the coaching carousel starts after reg season is over weird shit can happen. 

Tosh Lupoi as a HC brings the LULZ

3 one-year NFL stints do not inspire confidence. I admit to being unfamiliar with Lupoi's resume.

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