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“UCLA IN-CRISIS”
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They are leaving, UCLA football, headed to the Big 10-Conference.

He has left them, Chip Kelly, exiting the Bruins head coaching job.

Kelly is headed to the Big 10-too, but will show up as Ohio State’s Off Coord.

He has arrived, DeShaun Foster, as the surprise choice to take the Bruins job.

What a weekend for the once powerful Bruins team, the ones who won with Terry Donahue, Bob Toledo, Rick Neuhisel and Jim Mora.  Once upon a tme, the ‘Gutty Little Bruins’ or the Troy Aikman era.

Then came the bad hire of the ill prepared Karl Dorrell.  And now this mess with a name coach.

Now they have problems everywhere.

A trauma filled financial issue, with some 36M-in Athletic Department debt.  A university with a massive debt on the campus

A football program that has more empty seats at the Rose Bowl than fans in the stands.

A defection to the Big 10-Conference, triggered by the financial trauma, a move to play games in a powerful conference with very hard road trips coming up.

Blood on their hands, along with USC, for the death of the Pac 12, once knows as the Conference of Champions.

And now the nationally known coach exits, tin cans tied to his tail, after 6-years of disappointment at UCLA.

Chip Kelly, who built a brilliant football program at Oregon, is no longer what he used to be, one of college football’s bright lights.  He failed in the NFL with the Eagles, then the 49ers, then arrived at UCLA, only to drift aimlessly for the past 6-years.

Now after they gave him everything he wanted, including a record setting salary, and massive football budgets, he leaves in the middle of the night, with a (35-34) record, a fall from grace as a program, and he as a person.

He was interviewing for NFL jobs with the Raiders-Commanders, days after the National signing date, and a month after he lured players in from the transfer portal.

Now he has bailed, or been told to leave, but the wreckage left behind is monumental.  Lousy recruiting, half a coaching staff gone, his top QB having already left for Oregon, and the transfer portal opening for 30-days for UCLA players to leave because the coach left.

Lots of words come to mind at his hour when I think of Kelly.  Ingrate, deplorable, dispicable, selfish, egotistical, boorish, condescending.  They gave him everything he asked for to build the Bruins into what the Ducks were.  And he failed, and then he walked out.

Former Bruins running back DeShaun Foster is hired.  He spent 11-years there as a running back coach.  Just seven days ago he left to go to work for the Raiders, now he opts out and applies to come home upon finding Kelly jumped ship.

But this instant hire comes with issues.  He’s never been anything more than a position coach.  Never a coordinator.  Never a play-caller.  Never worked any side of the ball aside from running and catching it.

For AD-Martin Jarmond, this looks like a desperate move, hiring someone so unqualified for the big job as they move to the Big 10.

UCLA could have pursued a rock star coach like Pete Carroll, the USC and Seattle Seahawk icon.  There was David Shaw, the once highly regarded Stanford coach for more than a decade.  There was ex-Bruin Tony White, who helped rebuild Nebraska.  And a few other big names.

But they went for the easy choice, the home town running back, who has no experience swimming with the sharks that will be in the water in the Big 10.

And there’s a sidebar story.  Kelly not only lost bad games to bad teams over his tenure, not only failed to develop young star players, failed to get 5-star recruits to put on blue colors, there was so much off the field about him that turned out to be a turn off.

He refused to work with the collective raising NIL money.  He did not wish to interact with boosters.  He has a grudge relationship with the working media.  He didn’t care about anything except Xs-Os, his offense, his image.  It is all a bad look what he turned into.

And now we find out that the ‘Men of Westwood’, who run the NIL collective stopped giving money to UCLA football, and inferred if Kelly remained, they  would remain absent from involvement with Bruins football.

It is awful where we stand right now observing Bruins football.  Losing seasons, lost quarterbacks and now a late-late start right infront of spring football for an incoming inexperienced head coach, with half a coaching staff.

Kelly failing so badly, acting so badly, is an utter shock, to people inside and followers outside the circle covering UCLA football.

He used words like ‘relationships-friendships = championships’.  Guess that turned out to be a lie too, just like his reputation he could do at the Rose Bowl what he did at Autzen Stadium in Eugene.

Things cannot get worse can they?  You seen UCLA’s schedule for Year 1-in the Big 10-this fall?

Call me if you think the light at the end of the tunnel is a Foster-led UCLA solution, or a Big 10-freight train coming down the track?

UCLA in crisis for sure.

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