SMQB: Martin Jarmond Should "Read the Room" and Resign
The mess that is currently UCLA football is completely his doing. He must go. Now.
Well, let’s start today’s late edition of the Sunday Morning QB with the postgame press conferences.
Interim head coach Tim Skipper began his press conference by saying, “We need to start a lot better that first 30 minutes. We kind of spotted them some points and some plays.”
That begs one question: Has Tim Skipper been watching this team play before yesterday? It didn’t sound like it.
Slow starts have become the defining characteristic of this team.
He continued, “So, a lot of bonding and talking at halftime and we came out with a lot more fire and energy and we started making the plays. So, the guys started believing in everything we were talking about.”
Really? If that’s all it takes, then, maybe, do that before the game against Penn State kicks off on Saturday and you will knock off #7 Penn State at home.
Yeah, you do detect just a little sarcasm there.
The players who met with the media were Nico Iamaleava and Rodrick Pleasant.
Now that we’ve discussed the postgame press conferences, let’s move on to other topics which relate to UCLA football. Most notably, let’s talk about UCLA’s continued employment of Athletic Director Martin Jarmond.
On Friday, there was a truck driving around Westwood calling for the firing of UCLA AD Martin Jarmond. Having lived through Dan Guerrero’s reign of error, I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to do a worse job than Dan, but that’s where things are at.
For those of you who may not be on X.com (fka Twitter), there were reports yesterday that there were chants of “Fire Jarmond!” in the UCLA section at the Northwestern game yesterday.
Now, lest anyone reading this is not on board the Fire Jarmond train yet, let me take a few minutes to lay out the case for doing so.
In November 2023, it was clear that Bruin fans were finally done with Chip Kelly, but rather than recognizing that Kelly needed to go, Jarmond told Bruin fans to “Read the room” after the Bruins beat Southern Cal.
What ensued was two months which consisted of Chip Kelly interviewing for every job imaginable. Not surprisingly, nobody would touch him. It took until February for Kelly to find an opportunity he could use to get out of Westwood. That happened when his protege Ryan Day agreed to hire Kelly to replace the recently-hired Bill O’Brien who bolted on Day to become the new head coach at Boston College.
That move left Jarmond holding the bag.
He gave himself a 72-hour timeline for hiring a new head coach.
Instead of naming an interim head coach like Northwestern or Fresno State did, Jarmond gave DeShaun Foster, an unproven head coach a long-term five-year contract even though Foster had never been even a coordinator before, much less a head coach.
So, Jarmond bumbled the Chip Kelly situation, then he bumbled the job of replacing Kelly. The result has now cost UCLA millions of dollars and left the program in worse shape than it was in under Kelly.
Oh, and throughout the Guerrero era, we always heard the stories that former Chancellor Gene Block liked Dan because he was a “good financial manager.” The same cannot be said about Jarmond.
For years, Dan ran the Athletic Department without ever incurring a large loss until he fired Jim Mora and Steve Alford in close proximity to each other. That’s really when UCLA’s current death spiral began. The coaching dismissals were blamed for UCLA Athletics running a deficit which required a significant contribution from the main campus to cover the deficit. At the time, it was deemed to be a low-interest loan.
But in the years since, UCLA still has not gotten the Athletic Department back into the black. How could it?
Attendance at the Rose Bowl has absolutely cratered. While I had speculated as the New Mexico game got underway that the crowd might fit inside Pauley Pavilion, the small crowd was a bit larger than Pauley’s capacity of 13,800. Only 25,719 tickets were scanned at the Rose Bowl for the New Mexico game despite an announced attendance of 31,163. At that game, many in the crowd were fans of the Lobos.
To be sure, there is no reason to think that attendance will be much better this coming Saturday against Penn State, even though there are two factors which will certainly push the number of tickets scanned higher than New Mexico.
The first is that school is finally in session. The second is that the Penn State Nittany Lions are the #7 team in the nation and any self-respecting Penn State fan in Los Angeles will show up as will what I expect will be a large contingent of fans traveling from elsewhere to see the Nittany Lions play. I fully expect more navy blue and white inside the Rose Bowl than powderkeg blue and gold.
So, how do we solve this situation?
The easiest way would be if Martin Jarmond were to tender his resignation, effective immediately. It’s time for him to “read the room.” UCLA fans want him gone. Yesterday.
It would be the honorable thing to do.
Bruin Report Online is reporting that the turnout for the donor trip to Chicago this weekend was less than optimal. Tracy Pierson described it this way:
From what I’ve heard, there wasn’t a great turnout of donors for the trip. The smart ones and/or the ones who care and understand generally didn’t attend. There were some donors who attended, of course, but they tended to be the type that wear blue-and-gold-tinged glasses.
Of course, that would require that people inside the Morgan Center actually understand the level of ire Bruin fans currently have.
Let’s assume, however, that Jarmond cannot be counted on doing the honorable thing, even though he should walk in to the Chancellor’s Office and offer his resignation to Chancellor Frenk.
What can each of us do to affect things moving forward?
By now, I hope you know the drill.
Each of us needs to contact Chancellor Frenk.
A fellow Bruin alum and friend who goes by KosherBruin on X/Twitter has even put together an email you can send to the Chancellor and other UCLA administrators. Here’s an image of his tweet.
Now, clicking on the image here will take you to the tweet on X. To save you the extra click, you can simply click here and an email should pre-populate for you including all the needed recipients. That will allow you to avoid going to X/Twitter to click the link.
It’s time to turn up the heat on Martin Jarmond. Please email UCLA’s administrators ASAP.
Go Bruins.
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"That’s really when UCLA’s current death spiral began" I would argue that it began with the hiring of Alford...
Clicked link, email sent. Thanks for the heads up Joe!