The Eye Test: UCLA Loses to Northwestern, Putting a Further Nail in Martin Jarmond's Tenure

The case against Martin Jarmond remaining as UCLA AD.

(Photo credit: Isabella Serafini/uclabruins.com)

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UCLA losing to Northwestern was likely not a shocking result to anyone who has watched this team in 2025. The team looked “improved,” but only in a fashion that if you throw a bucket of water out of a sinking ship, you have improved it. The same problems that have plagued the team this season - an inability to get out of the blocks on offense, failure to be in the right position on defense, and a distinct lack of fundamentals - were present in this one, but at this point, it’s hard to say those will be fixed over the course of the season.

Just like last week, we’re not going to break down the game any further. There is not a lot of blood left in that stone. Instead, let this article serve as a reminder that Martin Jarmond is still in charge of UCLA athletics, and any chance of improvement for UCLA football (and the athletic department as a whole) has to begin with Jarmond’s removal.

While other places, like Bruin Report Online and the LA Times’ Bill Plaschke, have only recently begun to call for the removal of Martin Jarmond from his position, we’ve been on this particular beat for a long time. We wrote back in 2022 about how Jarmond had failed a series of tests, culminating in the mishandling of a scandal involving the gymnastics team. During the Chip Kelly debacle of 2024, we wrote that Jarmond was equally to blame for the mess UCLA found itself in, and then stated that Jarmond was unfit to lead UCLA after he proved to be the only person in the world willing to hire DeShaun Foster as head coach. In our defense, this site is not the source of our income, so we don’t have to hide behind the cowardice of “maintaining relationships for access” and can call a situation as we see it, and we’ll state it again for the people in the back:

Martin Jarmond should no longer be the athletic director of UCLA.

Jarmond’s choices directly led to UCLA’s loss to Northwestern. Let’s list out all the various reasons this is the case:

The Failure to Fire Kelly Created a Cascade of Suck

UCLA’s coach for the game against Northwestern was Tim Skipper. Tim Skipper was not the head coach at the start of the season, and you can’t really blame him for what happened in the game itself.

But the fact that UCLA was using an interim head coach so soon into the season is a major problem entirely of Jarmond’s making. To understand, you have to go all the way back to November 2023, when UCLA, coached by Chip Kelly, lost an embarrassing game to an Arizona State team that started a tight end at quarterback, falling to 6-4 on the year. By this point, fan disapproval with Kelly was at a fever pitch, and it would not have been shocking if Jarmond had decided to move on from Kelly at that moment, especially given the fact that he was not the athletic director who had hired him.

But Jarmond faltered in the moment. Some reports stated that Jarmond did make the decision to fire Kelly but was blocked by then-chancellor Gene Block, who had grown to distrust his athletic director (which tracks with the fact that Block did not extend Jarmond when he was in charge). There are other reports that Jarmond was spooked by the comments of Casey Wasserman, who publicly backed Kelly following the Arizona State loss, and wanted to wait until after the Southern Cal game to gain more cover.

You are all familiar with what happened next. Chip Kelly’s squad beat one of the more disinterested Southern Cal teams in recent memory, leading Jarmond to crow that UCLA fans needed to “read the room” regarding Kelly’s continued employment. I’m willing to bet that phrase will go down as one of the most infamous in UCLA history, but for our purposes, it was indicative of a tone-deaf administration that suffered from decision paralysis. Kelly immediately paid off his boss’s confidence by getting beaten down in the season finale against UC Berkeley and spending most of the offseason openly flirting with any open job that would have him, even if it was a downgrade in prestige. Jarmond allowed Chip Kelly to hold the program hostage for two months before he departed in February.

Now, despite all of that, Jarmond still had the opportunity to correct his mistakes with a solid head coaching hire. Even though Kelly’s late departure meant that UCLA missed out on obvious coaching candidates like Johnathan Smith and Jedd Fisch, the Bruins still had some solid options on the table, like Tony White, Barry Odom, and PJ Fleck available. This is where Jarmond made his second mistake related to Chip Kelly, as he had allowed Kelly to push him into giving contract extensions to the coaching staff despite Kelly clearly looking elsewhere. When Jarmond met with prospective head coaching options, one of the conditions laid out was that the coach had to keep the majority of the present staff, which was a non-starter for these established names. The only coach to take him up on this offer was DeShaun Foster, a coach who no serious program would consider for their head coaching opening, given his small resume and lack of experience.

The rest is history. DeShaun Foster was not the second coming of Dabo Swinney but was simply a coach in over his head, as he showed repeatedly during his tenure. The only tragedy here is that the only person who thought any of this was a good idea is still employed.

An Athletic Department Out of Touch with the Modern Game

As athletic director, Martin Jarmond’s job is to understand the shifting college sports landscape and best position UCLA for athletic success. In the modern game, that means understanding the role of Name, Image, and Likeness rights, or NIL, in creating a strong football program.

The problem here is that Jarmond and the athletic department under him have never embraced NIL in a way that would lead to success. The athletic department is neutral towards NIL at best and outright hostile towards NIL at worst. I think, on a basic level, Jarmond and the athletic department do not understand the correlation between NIL funds and athletic success, instead seeming to believe good old-fashioned recruiting and coaching is enough to overcome the funding support of their rivals. This is not a Jarmond-specific problem - you could write a book about all the times UCLA has been late to adapt to a changing college landscape in the last quarter century - but if Jarmond is more supportive of NIL efforts, he has a weird way of showing it.

Nothing signifies this hostility more than the actions of the Wooden Athletic Fund, the fundraising arm of the athletic department. According to multiple accounts, the Fund has spent the better part of the past few years trying to steer donors away from giving to UCLA’s various NIL collectives like Men of Westwood and instead donating to the WAF instead. Given UCLA’s budget issues over the past few years, it is understandable that UCLA would favor donations to the school; however, this is a good example of the athletic department's shortsightedness. The athletic department is seemingly unfamiliar with the most common adage of Los Angeles sports: the city loves a winner, and if you show you aren’t interested in winning, then fans aren’t interested in supporting you. By alienating fans with a subpar product on the field, brought on by a lack of NIL funds leading to poor talent acquisition, UCLA loses out on millions and millions of dollars in future donations.

There are reports that Martin Jarmond is hostile towards NIL because he believes that the forthcoming revenue share model will level the playing field and lead to a deemphasis of NIL. In that regard, he is half-right; rev share will create a more even playing field for so many programs, but only because it creates a floor that many of these schools will operate at. The bigger problem is that Jarmond may be one of the few administrators in the country who believes NIL will disappear with the implementation of revenue sharing. In reality, NIL is not going away, but instead becoming more powerful as it allows schools to go above the base rev share amount and acquire the best talent possible. UCLA may pay the approximate $13 million in rev share to football, which would match many of their peers in the SEC and Big Ten, but many of those peers will be spending closer to $20-25 million on their rosters thanks to NIL.

Bruce Feldman co-wrote an article at The Athletic regarding the end of the Foster era, and while it is the usual ball-washing of Chip Kelly you come to expect from Feldman, there is an anecdote that stands out. In it, a UCLA source told Feldman that in 2023, UCLA spent around $400,000 on its starting lineup, while rival Southern Cal was spending over 30 times that amount. You can point and laugh at Southern Cal for spending that much on their roster only to lose, and far be it from me to stop you, but it is indicative of a program that is trying to win compared to a program that is simply trying not to embarrass itself.

Hard to look at this current season and not be embarrassed. You only have Jarmond to blame there.

The Cheapening (and Exploitation) of UCLA Football

There’s a fascinating (in a morbid sense) situation happening with UCLA football at the moment where the experience of supporting the program has never been more expensive, yet the school is seemingly taking every opportunity to cut corners on cost. The result is a fanbase that is disconnected from the team and school.

Joe has been tracking UCLA attendance this season, and while I am personally not as concerned with UCLA fudging the official numbers since that is what most schools do, I am more concerned with how low the actual ticketed numbers are. In 2024, UCLA averaged 35,787 ticketed fans a game (in a year with a home game against Southern Cal), while in 2023 that number was 35,367 (buoyed entirely by Deion Sanders coming to town; that attendance of 68,615 is only 7,000 less than the first three games combined). And those are the good years; 2022 and 2021 are even lower averages. Compare that to the Mora era, where even the worst season saw announced attendance averaging in the high 60,000s. That attendance difference is huge and represents a major chunk of lost revenue for the department.

There are a few reasons for this. Obviously, the football team has been subpar for the last eight years, and no one wants to spend their money to go watch bad football. But it also does not help that UCLA is charging premium prices for these tickets. Right now, for example, you can still buy season tickets for the rest of the UCLA season for as cheaply as $234. Now, that also includes a $50 donation to WAF, so bump that number up to $284 per seat. Great deal, right? Except I can buy a ticket for Saturday’s game in that same section for $39, and that is for the lone premium game on the slate against Penn State. Maryland tickets cost $23, Nebraska costs $96, and Washington $41, which means I could go to games the rest of the season in the same section for $199 and save almost $100 (and that is assuming the Nebraska tickets don’t drop in price as UCLA continues to be bad). I’ll also note this is for the cheapest tickets; if you want 50-yard line tickets for the rest of the season, those are running you $2000 a ticket.

I’ll be honest, I will not be attending the Penn State game on Saturday (I have a good reason: LA Greek Fest is this weekend, and I’m one of the people running it. Stop by and come support!), and I sold my tickets for the game in a good section. I got $51 for each ticket, which is a decent amount, but based on the math from UCLA, I should have been able to sell those tickets for $121, as that is the per-game cost. It’s an absolute rip-off and indicative of UCLA pricing for a demand that is not there.

There’s a trend with the athletic department of setting high prices for their product and expecting the masses to pay for a “premium” experience. My favorite recent one was the Fan Meet during the fall Rose Bowl practice. For $100, you could get a guided locker room tour, a meet-and-greet with some of the players, and VIP field viewing of the scrimmage. UCLA took what had long been a free event - a meet and greet with players after an open practice for autographs - and made it an upcharge event. The end result speaks for itself: UCLA had only a handful of fans take them up on the offer.

It would be one thing if UCLA were using these premium prices to spend at a high level and fuel athletic success, but the opposite is happening. UCLA under Jarmond has become notorious for nickel-and-diming the football program and athletics experience. DeShaun Foster was the lowest-paid coach in the Big Ten, and his assistant pool was one of the lowest in the conference. The Feldman article had plenty of anonymous quotes from former UCLA staffers discussing being handstrung by a lower budget compared to other football programs. It makes zero sense.

One Final Word

I was all ready to post this article, and then Ben Bolch at the LA Times came out with a real whopper of an article discussing the failings of the Martin Jarmond regime and a brewing donor revolt. It’s well worth a read. Here are some highlights:

• In 2023, a group of donors was accidentally sent a database of personal information and spending habits of the athletic department’s biggest donors. The AD rescinded the information but did not offer an apology for sending it out in the first place.

• One donor was asked to share his favorite UCLA memories, which included a few Rose Bowls and a Fiesta Bowl. Jarmond responded to the donor’s memories by calling his expectations unrealistic and stating that UCLA should aim to win around seven to eight games a year.

• Athletics officials are calling donors to chide them about donating to NIL efforts rather than WAF.

• After asking the athletic department for comment regarding the article, Bolch quickly received phone calls from multiple donors to defend Jarmond, providing the same excuses Jarmond has been quick to state.

• There is a large pool of donors sitting on the sidelines waiting for UCLA to move on from Jarmond.

Again, the whole thing is worth a read when you have the time, but my biggest takeaway is that Jarmond’s continued employment is quickly becoming more trouble than he is worth, and he already isn’t worth that much to begin with. It’s one thing for us and for BRO to call for the firing of an athletic director, but when the LA Times is making the same call, that might be the real death knell.

Final Composite

Offense grade: F (0.0)

Defense grade: D- (0.7)

Special Teams grade: C (2.0)

Coaching grade: D (1.0)

Trending: Down

Final grade for New Mexico Lobos: F (0.0)

And here is how the grades have looked this season:

Utah Utes: D- (0.6)

UNLV Rebels: D- (0.6)

New Mexico Lobos: F (0.0)

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