SMQB: Bruin Fans Need to Have Hope After Embarrassing Season Opener

This year, hope may be our only strategy.

Anthony Woods’ play was one of the few bright spots of last night’s UCLA football season opener. (Photo Credit: Scott Chandler/uclabruins.com)

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For years, one of our mantras here at The Mighty Bruin has been “Hope is not a strategy.” Today, my friends, I’m going to provide you with the exception to that rule.

Indeed, after last night’s awful loss, hope may be the only thing we can cling to this season. Heaven knows, we can’t cling to the notion that we are going to win a lot of football games this season.

Last night made one thing clear: It’s going to be another long season for the Bruins. UCLA was dominated in almost every facet of the game last night.

Before I dive in, let’s take a quick look at what was said in the postgame press conferences.

After the game, Coach Foster said:

So, we just got to come back in, regroup, and really just grade yourself and and be hard on yourself. [I]t's not this isn't going to be easy, and you can't just go in there and point the finger at other people. You really got to see (sic) what what did I do to help this team?

That’s a really good question to ask today. What exactly did Coach Foster and the entire coaching staff do to help this team? They clearly didn’t prepare them for this game. They clearly didn’t put together any kind of effective game plan on either side of the ball. They clearly didn’t make any kind of halftime adjustments to fix the situation. So, what did they do to help this team?

After Coach Foster wrapped up, Nico Iamaleava was the only offensive player interviewed. While he owned the fact that the team needs to play better, he did make one really telling statement. He said:

We're going to face many more tough opponents out there on this on the schedule and we’ve got to be ready.

Well, he is right about that. Looking at the schedule after last night, it isn’t clear that this team will be able to win more than a handful of games, and certainly not anywhere near the six games they will need to: a) improve on last season, b) be bowl eligible this season.

After watching this team last night, my thought on the drive home was that this team may be lucky to win three games this season. Frankly, a three-win season should cost DeShaun Foster his job.

Through 13 games, Karl Dorrell, our longtime benchmark for UCLA mediocrity, was 6-7. That’s one win more than Foster at this point. After two seasons, Dorrell was 12-13. If this team finishes under .500 during the regular season, UCLA will need to move on from Foster.

The defense was represented by Isaiah Chisholm. On Devon Dampier, Chisholm said:

He's mobile and it was something coming into the game we knew that we had to focus on. But good players make plays and that's what was happening.

So, they knew that they had to focus on Dampier and they still couldn’t stop him. It doesn’t explain why the defense looked like they didn’t know what was going on most of the time.

Chisholm continued:

It sucks that it happened like this, but going into film tomorrow in practice, we know just exactly what we need to work on.

Well, that’s true, I guess. When you can’t stop the opposing offense at all, you pretty much need to work on everything.

Here’s the full video, courtesy of UCLA Athletics on YouTube.

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Personally, I’m getting concerned that UCLA football is in serious trouble and needs to be addressed sooner rather later. To be sure, Bruin fans have weathered tough seasons before but the combination of the Chip Kelly era and 13 games of the DeShaun Foster era has put the State of the Program at a crossroads.

Last night’s game saw just 35,032 fans show up and a good percentage of that were Utah fans.

If the opposite of love is not hate but apathy, UCLA is in danger of losing its fanbase, if it hasn’t already. The two UCLA home openers with the lowest attendance have occurred under Martin Jarmond’s watch. The only home opener of the last 25 seasons with lower attendance than last night was the Bowling Green game in 2022.

That’s a marketing failure. It’s an inability to give fans hope that the team is going to compete for a conference championship or better.

The program needs to start embracing the fans, instead of alienating them. It needs to stop shutting fans out of Fall Camp by EVERY means necessary. Not only have fans been prevented from going out to practice, but the information blackout imposed by Coach Foster hasn’t helped either.

If the program isn’t making some kind of positive news in August, how can you expect fans to want to come out? Give them a reason to believe that things will be different. Before last night’s game, I was hopeful. In fact, I even had text exchanges with a few people who wanted to know what I thought about the upcoming season.

I explained that I was cautiously optimistic. I liked the fact that Coach Foster recognized the need to make changes on the offensive side of the ball and that he made them. In the only interview new offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri gave during Fall Camp, he sounded like the an up-and-coming coach who could one day become a very good head coach.

But somewhere between that interview and last night, the wheels completely came off. I’d be tempted to say that the Bruins had started to believe their own hype, except that there was no hype for them to believe because Foster had shut players down from talking to the media because “we’re trying to win football games.” Of course, the keyword in that quote is “trying.”

Where’s Yoda when we need him?

“No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

Maybe Foster isn’t much of Star Wars fan. Well, we know he bleeds blue and gold. How about John Wooden then?

There is absolutely no way last night’s game can be considered a success under Coach Wooden’s definition of success.

The team certainly did not become the best they were capable of becoming.

Now, I didn’t see Chancellor Frenk at last night’s game. So, I don’t know if he was in the building or not, but it was the first UCLA football game since he became Chancellor in January. I sure hope he was there to witness the embarrassment that was last night’s game.

(Editor’s note: After publishing this article, I found a tweet from Chancellor Frenk. He was, indeed, there to witness last night’s embarassment. Please let him know what you thought about last night’s game.)

From what I read, Chancellor Frenk became quite the football fan during his time as President of the University of Miami. If he was in attendance, he certainly can’t be very happy about the outcome of the game.

Now, there’s been some speculation that Frenk may not be UCLA Chancellor very long, mostly due to the fact that he’s on the older side. That doesn’t mean that he can’t make a significant contribution to UCLA.

UCLA football needs to be fixed once and for all.

The Bruins now have a Chancellor who is a football fan. Frenk didn’t hesitate to replace Blake James with Dan Radakovich at Miami in order to set the Hurricane program on an upward trajectory.

It may take one of the worst seasons in UCLA football history to bring about the sort of change that is needed to bring back both the program and the fans. And, after watching last night’s game, we may very well be looking at that this season.

But, I remain confident that the sleeping giant which is UCLA football will be put on solid footing before UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk leaves Westwood. Even if the next three months make up the longest UCLA football season we have ever seen.

For once, hope may be our only strategy.


Go Bruins.

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