BREAKING: UCLA to Hire Bob Chesney as Bruins' Next Football Coach
The James Madison coach is signing a five-year deal to head west.
The news had been trickling out for a week or so, but things are finally official. Per Pete Thamel of ESPN, UCLA and James Madison’s Bob Chesney have come to terms on a five-year contract for Chesney to become the next head football coach at UCLA. UCLA will allow Chesney to coach the Dukes this Friday in the Sun Belt Conference championship game as well as the College Football Playoff if JMU is selected.
As stated, news of Chesney’s imminent arrival in Westwood had trickled out for weeks, starting with a report a few weeks ago that Chesney had emerged as the top target of the UCLA search. There were questions about whether this was a leverage ploy to get Penn State to act, but as time went on, it became clearer that the interest was real on both sides. On Saturday, during the Southern Cal game, FootballScoop reported on the terms of a potential contract, stating it would be in the $6-7 million range, which would line up with similar contracts for other G5 coaches moving up this cycle, like Jon Sumrall and Alex Golesh. This morning, FootballScoop’s John Brice reported that Chesney had informed his team that he was taking another job, and Thamel ultimately reported that UCLA was the destination with a five-year contract.
Here is what I wrote about a potential Chesney hire in the latest Hot Board:
Bob Chesney has always been near the top of my internal list of candidates for UCLA, but always as a guy I figured UCLA administrators would not dare consider. I’ll get to the why in a second, but for my money, it would be harder to find a better coaching candidate this cycle than Chesney.
It makes sense that Chesney was the name tabbed to succeed Curt Cignetti at James Madison because, much like Cignetti, all Chesney does is win. Chesney has a 129-51 record as a head coach across 16 seasons, with stops at DIII Salve Regina, DII Assumption, and FCS Holy Cross. At every stop, Chesney has won, winning conference titles and making playoff appearances along the way. What stands out is that Chesney has a reputation for taking moribund programs and turning them around quickly; Chesney is responsible for four of Holy Cross’s six overall berths in the FCS playoffs, and did a similar trick at Assumption. James Madison stands out as the first time Chesney took over a program that had experienced some recent success, but Cignetti had taken the core of his team with him to Indiana, leaving a rebuild for Chesney. That rebuild finished quicker than anticipated; after a 9-4 record in 2024, the Dukes are sitting at 9-1 this year, running away with the Sun Belt and with a shot at making the College Football Playoffs as the G5 representative. Not bad, all things considered.
Chesney is known as a culture guy, not as much an X’s and O’s guy. That has worked for him at all of his prior stops, as he and his staff have done an excellent job identifying talent and developing them. It also means he hasn’t been married to one philosophy, making him more adaptable to the changing college football landscape (but also making him more susceptible to a bad decision, if we are being fair).
But there are some things to be wary of here. For one, Chesney has no experience at the P4 level. At least with Cignetti, he had worked as an assistant coach at the P4 level, including at Alabama under Nick Saban; Chesney has none, and while he’s still generating success as he moves from the FCS to the FBS, it is a whole nother ballgame to move up to P4 football, specifically the high stakes world of the Big Ten and SEC. In addition, Chesney has never worked on the west coast, or even outside of the Northeast; James Madison is the first job he’s taken outside of New England. There may be some culture shock with the move. Finally, his recruiting ability is a bit of an unknown, but how much that ultimately matters in the new NIL world remains to be seen.
We’ll have more Chesney write-ups in the coming hours and days, but for now, I think it is important to note that UCLA executed a pretty flawless coaching search for the first time this century.
Welcome to Westwood, Bob Chesney!
Go Bruins!
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Darn. I had reached such a safe emotional space this year, but now I will have hope again.
Welcome, Coach Chesney. LFG!!! 💙🏈💛
I like it. I was afraid we'd go for another fossilized retread.