UCLA Finally Gets a Football Coaching Search Right
What are the Bruins getting with Bob Chesney?
There wasn’t any white smoke coming up from the Morgan Center, or even Royce Hall this morning. Instead, it was a flurry of reports on X.com citing “sources” which indicate that the UCLA Athletic Department has selected the school’s next football coach.
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting this news to break this morning. A source close to UCLA’s search committee indicated to me just yesterday that it would be “days.” Plural.
Of course, I took that to mean sometimes later this week at the earliest. And, I fully expected that was because the Bruins had zeroed in on their guy and were letting Bob Chesney coach James Madison in Friday’s Sun Belt Conference championship game.
Ultimately, I thought we might not even hear anything until after the CFP field is announced next Sunday because the Dukes could find themselves in this year’s College Football Playoff.
There still hasn’t been any official confirmation from UCLA, Chesney or JMU, but the fact is that so many outlets are reporting the news that it’s impossible to think this could fall apart for some reason. But, as Dimitri mentioned in his article on the Chesney hire, FootballScoop.com’s Johh Brice tweeted that Chesney has informed his players that he will be leaving.
So, that raises the question: What is UCLA getting with Bob Chesney?
Before I go there, I have advocated for a long time that “It’s finally time for UCLA to go in the direction of a young, up-and-coming coach for whom UCLA is a destination job and not just another stop on their way to the NFL.”
If there were a dictionary entry which defined a “young, up-and-coming coach”, Bob Chesney’s picture would be right next to that definition.
He’s just 48 years old. Let’s face it. Sean McVay not withstanding, that’s pretty young by most standards. Sure, he’s 14 years older than Florida Atlantic’s Zach Kittley, who at 34, was the youngest head coach in the FBS this season, but Chesney is still a relatively young head coach.
Up-and-coming? Chesney certainly checks that box. He has literally earned his bones. After playing defensive back at Dickinson College, a Division III school, located in Carlyle, Pennsylvania, Chesney was a grad assistant for two years at Norwich University in Vermont.
In 2002, Chesney was hired as the defensive coordinator at Delaware Valley University, a D-III school in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. He moved to King’s College the next season, a D-III school in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he spent two seasons as the school’s special teams coordinator.
In 2005, he was hired by Johns Hopkins as the special teams coordinator and defensive backs coach. In 2007, he added defensive coordinator duties for the Blue Jays. He was promoted again in 2009. This time, he gave up special teams duties, but was now assistant head coach. That season, the Blue Jays made the D-III playoffs but lost to Wesley in the quarterfinals.
Chesney was hired to his first head coaching job at Salve Regina in 2010. The Seahawks finished with a 4-6 record in 2009 before Chesney was hired. His first season flipped the team’s record to 6-4. In his second season, they went 8-3. In his third and final year at the Newport, Rhode Island school, the team went 9-2.
After three years at Salve Regina, Chesney departed for Assumption University in Worchester, Massachusetts. Assumption is, perhaps, best known as the alma mater of former LSU head coach Brian Kelly. The school’s football stadium is even named for Kelly. The Greyhounds had finished the 2012 season with a 3-7 record. Chesney led the school to a winning record in his first season, going 6-5. The team improved to 7-4 in 2014. The team improved to 11-2 in 2015, making it to the second round of the D-III playoffs and finishing the year with an 11-2 record. They made the D-III playoffs again in 2016 and finished 9-3. Then, in 2017, they made it to the D-III quarterfinals and finished 11-2.
After Holy Cross started 2-5 in 2017, they fired head coach Tom Gilmore. Ultimately, the Crusaders finished that season with a 4-7 record. This time, Chesney moved across town to take over the Crusaders. The 2018 Crusaders improved to 5-6. It was Chesney’s only losing season in his coaching career. The next four years saw Chesney lead the Crusaders to the FCS Playoffs. They finished 2019 with a 7-6 record. In the 2020-21 season, they went 3-1, losing to eventual champion South Dakota State, 31-3, in the first round. The Crusaders improved to 10-3 in 2021 and advanced to the second round of the FCS playoffs. Chesney led the Crusaders to a 12-1 record in 2022 and the FCS quarterfinals. Again, they fell to eventual champion South Dakota State. In his final season at Holy Cross, the Crusaders went 7-4.
That brings us to James Madison. After Curt Cignetti was hired by Indiana, the Dukes hired Chesney. Despite losing much of the JMU roster to Indiana, Chesney still managed to lead the Dukes to a 9-4 record and a 27-17 win over Western Kentucky in the Boca Raton Bowl. That bowl game may have been Chesney’s first taste of the Crosstown Rivalry because the Hilltoppers are coached by Tyson Helton, a former Southern Cal assistant when his brother Clay was the Trojans’ head coach.
Of course, this season, Chesney’s Dukes have been off the charts. After opening with a 45-10 win over Weber State, JMU lost their only game of the season so far when they fell to Louisville, 28-14. The Dukes have now won ten games in a row including a 24-20 win over Washington State. James Madison has not allowed more than 28 points all season while they have scored more than 45 points in five of their games.
All told, Chesney’s record as a head coach is 131-51. Between JMU and Holy Cross, he’s 64-26 at the Division I level.
Chesney married his wife Andrea in 2007 and they have two daughters and a son.
On one hand, I could argue that it’s taken UCLA almost a decade to get a football head coaching search right. I could also argue that it’s really taken almost 25 years to get it right if we go back to the search to replace Bob Toledo.
This morning, Chesney held his weekly press conference discussing JMU’s game against Coastal Carolina and previewing Friday’s SBC championship game.
The part of the press conference which really stood out, as we look to what UCLA is getting by hiring Bob Chesney, comes at the 19:37 mark when a reporter asks about caring for his players off the field and building them up. Chesney responded:
“It’s really cool because the the last home game we had here there was a kid from Johns Hopkins on the sideline that I coached in 2005. Then there was four or five kids from Salve that I coached back in 10, 11, 12, you know, and then there was two kids from Assumption here. And then there were also Holy Cross kids here, you know. So, to me, that’s really it. That’s really it.
“I want to be able to look at that young man somewhere down the line where in some cases it’s close to 20 years later or is 20 years later and I want to know that I gave him everything I had. That’s ultimately it, like as a coach.
“The the worst thing that could happen, I think, is that someone says to you, man, I had more to give and you didn’t you didn’t get it out of me. That’s the worst thing that I think could happen as a coach. That’s like the sort of the kiss of death as a coach…them saying, ‘Hey, you were really hard on me. I didn’t understand at the time. I do now.’ Those things are all…those you could live with. The one of, ‘Hey, I had more to give and you just never challenged me or pushed me. You never helped me become the person I should have became, not only on the field, but off the field.’ That’s the one that would be challenging to live with.
“And I think that, to me, comes from watching [his dad Bob Chesney, Sr.] do it, you know, all his years in high school and help those young men become or help those boys become young men. My job is to help these young men become men, and that is something that is, ultimately, my due north or true north in this whole profession.”
What a breath of fresh air! Not only did Chesney offer transparency to the media, but he showed humility and some humor while also keeping the focus on the fact that JMU is hosting the SBC title game for the first time.
He totally deflected questions away from him while noting that he appreciated the reporter who was trying to break the story, which actually ended up breaking shortly after the press conference.
Welcome to Westwood, Coach Chesney!
Go Bruins!!!!
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Just glad it's a season and a process behind us. Best of luck to our new head coach and I'm on board with support!
He speaks like a coach to run through walls for.