What is UCLA Football's Ceiling in the New College Football Landscape?

Trying to diagnose what, exactly, the problems with UCLA are at the moment, and if it is fixable.

Can UCLA find success in its new conference digs? (Photo credit: uclabruins.com)

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I’ve been spending some time the past few weeks reading (next TMB Book Club next week I promise!) and catching up on any new pieces of writing in the general college athletics space. Besides the obvious pieces about how the landscape is shifting thanks to conference realignment and the NCAA vs House settlement, I found myself reading through a recent Stewart Mandel piece at the Athletic rating how teams are affected by the new shifts in the landscape. It’s an interesting piece, as one would expect given Mandel is a good writer, but it is rather general by design.

What stood out to me was his rating for UCLA. He gave UCLA a -4 on a “5 to -5” scale, and stated the following:

Almost nothing about the new world does the Bruins any favors. UCLA is a basketball school whose donors have done little to support football’s NIL efforts. It is joining a conference full of big brands and football-first fan bases. Not a recipe for success.

It should be noted that only two former Pac-12 schools earned a positive score, so UCLA ending up in the negative isn’t that shocking, but the fact that UCLA ended up that low still got me thinking: is Mandel right? Is UCLA football screwed in this new college football landscape?

After a few moments of getting over the shock, I concluded that Mandel was not far off in his assessment. It is not hard to see all the ways that UCLA is not currently built for success in the near term or future, and how that is putting artificial limits on UCLA football’s ceiling. None of this is broken beyond repair, for the record, but it would require a huge shift in how UCLA approaches the sport from an administrative and donor standpoint. That said, here are a few of the major things limiting UCLA’s ceiling.

Administrative Support

This is a catch-all, to be sure, but we have to start here because it is painfully obvious at this point that UCLA lacks the administrative support for football that other schools in the Big Ten have.

Just consider the hiring of Deshaun Foster at the top here. No, I’m not talking about the qualifications of Foster here. I’m talking more about the fact that the UCLA administration knew it had a problem with Foster’s predecessor and instead of taking decisive action to correct that mistake, allowed Chip Kelly to continue to damage the program and allowed him to seek his exit from the school on his terms at the expense of the future of UCLA football all to save a few dollars. Kelly officially left UCLA on February 9th, after National Signing Day and before the start of spring practice. It would not have mattered if Foster was the second coming of Nick Saban; by waiting that long to make a change, it ensured that Foster was going to have to start with one hand tied behind his back, which is completely unfair to Foster and the program in general.

But that has been the general tact of the UCLA administration, which has constantly taken the path of least resistance instead of trying to be proactive. Regarding football, the common practice for the athletic department was to give Chip Kelly an unprecedented level of leeway and constantly deflect criticism of the results. Kelly’s refusal to even entertain the concept of NIL as a major changing force in the sport meant that the athletic department could hamper any efforts to establish an NIL collective, leaving UCLA with a shell of what many programs have. Attendance under Kelly shrunk considerably; a comparison of 2016-2018 averages to 2022-2023 showed that UCLA saw the biggest attendance drop of any Power Four program with a loss of 13,500 fans in that period, a ridiculous loss of revenue that the administration shrugged at. It is even hard to give the administration credit for the move to the Big Ten, as reporting has pointed to Fox being the biggest driver behind the move and wanting to get Southern Cal football into the conference, with UCLA being a willing accomplice to help solve its money woes.

Now, a recent episode of Split Zone Duo attempted to answer the question of whether Deshaun Foster is being set up to fail (I’ve already come out and said yes, and the SZD crew ultimately came to the same conclusion) but in the process of answering that question host Richard Johnson intimated that Foster could see more administrative support than Kelly did simply by actually being hired by current athletic director Martin Jarmond. I think there is something to this, especially because athletic directors in the current era are judged by their football hires more than anything else, and this is the highest-profile hire Jarmond has made in his career. It would behoove Jarmond to show more support to Foster and provide everything possible to make him a success, but the actions (or rather, inaction) of the previous years are already setting UCLA on the back foot. Even if Jarmond was waiting out Kelly’s contract as a cost-saving move, he should have been more proactive at the margins, especially regarding NIL, to set up Foster or any coach for more immediate success.

(If you’re wondering if this applies to men’s basketball as well, I would say no, mostly because Mick Cronin has figured out how to work around the UCLA administration and has more high-level donor support than Jarmond does at this point. It helps that basketball does not require the same high level of NIL per year that football does, but for the most part Cronin has found success despite the UCLA administration, which struggles to fill Pauley Pavilion even when the team is great.)

New Conference Pecking Order

The shift to the Big Ten will likely help UCLA in a variety of sports, as the conference is not as strong as the Pac-12 was in a host of sports which should allow UCLA to thrive, but that is not the case in football. One of the big criticisms of the last few decades has been UCLA’s inability to put things together enough to win the conference, instead watching Southern Cal, Stanford, Oregon, Washington, and Utah walk away with the conference glory while the Bruins muddled in the middle. It is especially disappointing because the Pac-12 was not filled with world-beaters during the past decade. UCLA was historically one of the stronger teams in the conference, enjoying a higher position than its peers.

That will not be the case in the new Big Ten. UCLA is, at the very best, sixth in the pecking order behind Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Southern Cal, and Oregon. You could easily make the case that UCLA is also behind Iowa, Washington, and Wisconsin as well. No matter how well UCLA does in the future, it is going to have to contend with a host of programs that have historically taken football much more seriously than it ever has, and by its very nature that will limit the ceiling the program has.

I do think there are some positives to the move; for example, UCLA should do much better at recruiting the Midwest, which can especially help with the offensive line and defense (California in general has seen a drop in higher-end offensive line talent). But to compete on that front, UCLA needs to figure out some things in recruiting, especially in NIL.

Fan Support

I mentioned earlier that UCLA has struggled with attendance in recent years, and while that does highlight a failure on the part of the athletic department to recognize fan apathy, I do think it is something that should be highlighted more, as UCLA has not proven itself to be very good at supporting its major sports in recent years.

This feels like something that may backfire on me considering this is a UCLA fan blog, but UCLA fans have been pretty apathetic when it comes to supporting the athletic programs in recent years. There are, of course, factors to consider (COVID was a big one for a few years, for example), but I have to say that the adage that UCLA fans will support a winning product seems to be falling by the wayside in recent years as well. Despite all of our collective concerns, UCLA has turned in winning seasons in the past few years in football, and the basketball team has generally been very good in recent years. Yet looking at attendance, you would be hard-pressed to believe that; UCLA football attendance has fallen by the wayside while basketball struggles to fill the house outside of a few marquee games.

If I had to place blame, a lot of this seems like a decades-long failure by the athletic department to convert students into lifelong fans, and to keep those lifelong fans invested in the program. A lot has been written about how difficult it is to get student attendance at the Rose Bowl, but even basketball games struggle with student attendance, and that should be a much easier proposition. And while lower-end UCLA season tickets are on the reasonable end (the lowest per-seat cost for UCLA is $350, compared to a starting price of $465 for Southern Cal as an example), that lack of student engagement means less opportunity to convert graduating students into season ticket holders. The result is an aging fan base that struggles to fill the stadium when the various teams are good, and would rather be anywhere else when the teams are bad. It’s not a good look, especially in a new conference where fans show up no matter how good or bad the team is.

So, is the ceiling low?

Here’s the million-dollar question: is UCLA resigned to being an also-ran in its new conference, or is there a path forward that can be taken?

My honest answer is there probably is a path forward to UCLA being an upper-crust football team in the new Big Ten, but it is going to require a lot of changes. One major advantage UCLA has always had is its location in a hotbed of football talent, and one of the early positives of the Deshaun Foster era has been his recognition that UCLA should be fortifying itself in California. Nine of UCLA’s 15 current commitments for the 2025 class are from California, with seven being from Southern California. Now, I don’t think UCLA will ever out-recruit the Ohio States of the conference, but there is no reason they cannot recruit at a top 25 level with a good amount of four-star talent, and get an increase in the level of talent in the program on an annual basis will help raise the floor of the team.

Deshaun Foster has also done a good job of trying to get more donor support for the program, but this one has to be more on the athletic department doing what it can to shift more donor money toward these initiatives. With the large influx of TV money UCLA is set to receive as a member of the Big Ten, the athletic department should start shifting donors away from Wooden Athletic Fund donations and instead giving their money to Men of Westwood, offering the same incentives. And if the athletic department is afraid of the NCAA, I would suggest they finally recognize just how powerless the organization is and do what is necessary to compete at a higher level. The best part of all, whenever the various schools figure out a new way forward regarding paying players, it won’t be that difficult for the athletic department to have donors shift their donations back to the school.

Another long-term goal for the athletic department has to be getting current students more invested in athletics. UCLA has a pretty bad recent track record of getting students engaged with athletics; anyone else remember when Jim Mora had to embarrass the athletic department into paying for student bussing for the Spring Game in 2013? And given what student attendance was for basketball this past year, I would hazard a guess that marketing to students is not exactly a priority for the current athletic department. UCLA athletics needs to make its presence known on campus, especially in the freshmen dorms, so that students can get hooked on going to games early and often. I also assume getting to the Rose Bowl will be an “easier” proposition once the D-Line extension to the Metro opens at UCLA in 2027, though it is still an imperfect solution.

(By the way, as much as I am one of the people who believe there is no chance UCLA will build an on-campus stadium, given the new school chancellor and the large amount of real estate UCLA is buying up to free up space, now would seem to be one of the best times yet for the school to reconsider a push for an on-campus stadium.)

The point is that UCLA fans should not fear that they will be forever relegated to second-class status in football now that they’re in the Big Ten. There is a potential roadmap for success. Unfortunately, it would require a huge change in approach from various stakeholders and a length of time for the various wheels to be put in motion before results could be seen. It’s not impossible, but it will require a lot of effort.

Go Bruins!

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