chip kelly

A large group of former UCLA football players sent a letter to chancellor Julio Frenk earlier this month asking for besieged athletic director Martin Jarmond to be replaced “to reestablish the university’s commitment to excellence, both on and off the field.”

The 64 players, who represent multiple eras of UCLA football spanning coaches Bob Toledo to Chip Kelly and include several who went on to play in the NFL, wrote to “express deep concern with the current direction of UCLA Athletics under Martin Jarmond. Despite the resources, history, and opportunities at his disposal, Mr. Jarmond has not demonstrated the level of leadership or vision consistent with UCLA’s proud legacy. Rather than building on the foundations of greatness established by those before him, his tenure has fallen short of advancing UCLA to its rightful place among the nation’s premier programs.

“UCLA deserves an athletic director who understands that this role is not merely about administration, but about stewardship of a legacy — one rooted in excellence, historic achievement, and national leadership. Unfortunately, Mr. Jarmond has not embodied these values, nor has he positioned UCLA Athletics to rise to the standard its history demands.”

The letter went on to call for new leadership, saying it was part of a movement “bigger than any one of us. Former players have joined forces — through countless calls, texts, and meetings — to push this cause forward. We are united in our commitment to protecting the proud legacy of UCLA football and athletics.”

A UCLA spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jarmond has come under fire since the dismissal of coach DeShaun Foster after only 15 games illuminated the athletic director’s stewardship of the football program. Jarmond’s refusal to fire Kelly before Kelly abruptly left in February 2024 to take a job as offensive coordinator at Ohio State led to the whirlwind hiring of Foster, a position coach whose deficiencies as a head coach were on full display while posting a 5-10 record that included an 0-3 start this season.

Others have since criticized Jarmond for a broad range of shortcomings, including an insufficient response to leaked donor data, lowered expectations for success involving a once-proud football program and carte blanch spending that has led to staggering athletic department deficits.

A petition seeking Jarmond’s removal or resignation garnered 1,462 signatures and a mobile billboard truck circled Westwood with messages such as “UCLA Football Deserves Better Fire AD Martin Jarmond” and “$7 Million Buyout for UCLA’s AD? Failure Never Paid So Well.”

Some have questioned why Jarmond was granted a contract extension in May 2024, at a time when UCLA was transitioning from outgoing chancellor Gene Block to Frenk. According to the terms of that extension, Jarmond would be owed roughly $7.1 million, or the full amount of a contract that runs through June 30, 2029, if he was terminated without cause.

Many appear to want him gone before then. Before each of the football team’s last two home games at the Rose Bowl, an airplane has flown over the stadium pulling a banner calling for his dismissal.

UCLA’s five-member search committee for its next football coach that was revealed Thursday features heavy hitters from various corners of the professional sports world, including two who helped engineer a quick turnaround with the NFL’s Washington Commanders.

Commanders general manager Adam Peters and adviser Bob Myers — who will be joined on the committee by sports executive Casey Wasserman, former NFL star linebacker Eric Kendricks and UCLA executive senior associate athletics director Erin Adkins — were part of the team that hired Washington coach Dan Quinn, who took the Commanders to the NFC Championship Game in his first season.

They will hope to have similar success in selecting the successor to Bruins coach DeShaun Foster, who was fired earlier this month after his team started the season with three consecutive losses. Every member of the committee will be driven to find a winner given they either graduated from UCLA or work for the school’s athletic department.

“I want to thank the members of the search committee who have, out of their love for UCLA, agreed to contribute their time and expertise to this process,” Bruins athletic director Martin Jarmond, who will head the committee, said in a statement. “We will identify, recruit and invest in a leader who has the vision, the confidence, the attitude, and the proven ability to return UCLA football to national prominence, and we will provide the resources to compete and win at the highest level. That’s our commitment to our alumni, fans and supporters.”

One prominent figure with strong UCLA ties missing from the committee was Troy Aikman, the former Bruins quarterback and Pro Football Hall of Famer who was part of the committee that in 2017 landed Chip Kelly. That hiring of the hottest coaching candidate on the market was considered a coup, even if Kelly’s results in the six seasons that followed were largely disappointing.

The only holdover from the committee that hired Kelly is Wasserman, a UCLA megadonor who is also the founder and chief executive of the eponymous sports and media talent agency.

After Kelly left the Bruins in February 2024 to become Ohio State’s offensive coordinator, Jarmond used an internal search committee consisting of athletic department employees — including Adkins, who heads the department’s name, image and likeness strategy and initiatives — to select Foster in less than 72 hours.

UCLA will have considerably more time to select its next coach given that most hires are made in December.

Myers, a reserve forward on the Bruins’ last national championship basketball team in 1995, hired Steve Kerr in his role as general manager of the Golden State Warriors. The Warriors have won four NBA titles under Kerr, who was also selected the NBA’s coach of the year during the 2015-16 season.

After leaving the Warriors in 2023, Myers has worked as an ESPN basketball analyst and was appointed to the board of the University of California regents. Myers also assisted Peters, a former defensive end for UCLA’s football team, in the coaching search that landed Quinn.

Before he joined the Commanders, Peters enjoyed a successful career as vice president of player personnel and assistant general manager with the San Francisco 49ers, helping the team appear in four NFC Championship Games and two Super Bowls over his seven seasons with the franchise.

The youngest member of the committee is Kendricks, the former Butkus Award-winning linebacker with the Bruins who is currently a free agent after 10 NFL seasons that included a Pro Bowl appearance in 2019.

UCLA said it would have no additional comment on the search or candidates until a hire is announced.

Las Vegas Raiders offensive coordinator Chip Kelly told reporters Thursday that he does not game plan with team minority owner and Fox NFL broadcaster Tom Brady — at least not “on a weekly basis” — despite a report during “Monday Night Football” this week that suggested otherwise.

During the first quarter of the Chargers-Raiders game at Allegiant Stadium, ESPN’s Peter Schrager reported from the sideline that “Chip Kelly told us that he talks to Brady two to three times a week. They go through film. They go through the game plan.”

After the game, Raiders coach Pete Carroll called the report “not accurate” and said that while he and Kelly speak with Brady “regularly,” those conversations are “about life and football and whatever.”

Kelly was asked about the ESPN report during media availability Thursday. His response echoed Carroll’s.

“I’ve spent a lot of time just talking football with [Brady], but it’s not on a — we don’t talk about game plans,” the former UCLA coach said. “We spent a lot of time over the summer, a couple Zooms … and we would just talk ball, you know, ‘What did you like against this?’ So really, when I use Tom, and I just use him as a resource of, ‘Hey, you know, when you faced a Mike Zimmer-type defense, what did you like protection-wise and play-wise?’

“But on a weekly basis, he’s not game planning with us or talking to us.”

Kelly later added: “In terms of weekly game plans, like, that’s not a collaboration that we do. I mean, he’s also a busy guy, so I haven’t even thought of using him to do that, and I don’t think you can, so — you know, our staff does all that.

“But he’s been a guy that I could talk football with, just shooting it about, ‘Hey, have you ever faced a two-trap defense?’ and, ‘With the inverted, Tampa two that everybody’s running now, what was your best thoughts about that?,’ things like that. But we don’t talk game plan at all or any of that stuff in terms of on a weekly basis.”

The Times reached out to ESPN for comments from Schrager or the network on the matter. A network representative declined to comment.

During Schrager’s report, “Monday Night Football” showed a live shot of Brady sitting in the Raiders coaches’ booth and wearing a headset. Kelly told reporters Thursday that he thinks Brady did the same thing during the Raiders’ preseason game last month against the San Francisco 49ers, also at Allegiant Stadium.

“But he doesn’t talk to the coaches when he’s up there,” Kelly said. “I think he just — he’s watching football.”

NFL chief spokesperson Brian McCarthy said in a statement Tuesday that Brady was doing nothing wrong.

“There are no policies that prohibit an owner from sitting in the coaches’ booth or wearing a headset during a game,” McCarthy said. “Brady was sitting in the booth in his capacity as a limited partner.”

Brady faces a number of NFL-imposed restrictions on what he’s allowed to do as a broadcaster given his dual status as a team minority owner. Last season, Brady’s first in both roles, he was prohibited from attending the weekly production meetings during which the Fox crew meets with coaches and players ahead of that week’s game.

That restriction was eased going into this season.

“Tom continues to be prohibited from going to a team facility for practices or production meetings,” McCarthy said in his statement. “He may attend production meetings remotely but may not attend in person at the team facility or hotel. He may also conduct an interview off site with a player like he did last year a couple times, including for the Super Bowl.

“Of course, as with any production meeting with broadcast teams, it’s up to the club, coach or players to determine what they say in those sessions.”

They’re bad.

They’re really bad.

They’re, like, 0-12 bad.

The Bad News Bruins are a quarter of their way to completing a winless season, and who’s to say they won’t do what no UCLA team has done in more than a century and lose every game they play?

New Mexico tight end Simon Mapa (85) scores in front of UCLA linebacker Isaiah Chisom (32) on fourth down during the first half at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Friday night.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

They lack discipline, they can’t tackle, they can’t score and their coach sounds as if he has no idea how to extract them from what he acknowledged was the lowest point in his decades associated with their program.

DeShaun Foster once again looked completely out of his depth on Friday night when UCLA was humiliated in a 35-10 defeat to 15 1/2 -point underdog New Mexico, and now the question isn’t if the second-year coach will be fired but when.

Foster said he “most definitely” still felt he was the right coach to lead the program but he failed to make a persuasive case as to why that was the case.

“Because I can get these boys to play,” Foster said.

Did Foster feel as overmatched?

“Nope,” he replied. “Not at all.”

Except Foster looks overmatched. He sounds overmatched.

He has preached discipline to his players, but he either doesn’t know how to effectively deliver the message or teach them to exercise greater self-control. The Bruins committed 13 penalties during their loss to New Mexico, which cost them 116 yards. A week earlier in a defeat to UNLV, the Bruins were flagged for 14 penalties.

Foster didn’t sound as if he had any solutions.

UCLA coach Deshaun Foster leans over with his hands on his thighs while standing on the sidelines during the final moments of the Bruins’ loss to New Mexico at the Rose Bowl on Friday.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

“It blows my mind,” he said.

UCLA’s run defense, or lack thereof, was equally mind blowing. New Mexico rushed for 298 yards, and that was with starting running back Scottre Humphrey playing only the first quarter because of an injury.

Foster pointed to how the Bruins won four of their last six games last year as a reason he believed they would turn around their season.

However, racking up personal fouls and allowing opponents to run all over you aren’t trademarks of winning football, and considering the magnitude of the problems this year, it’d be naive to think they could be remedied any time soon.

Of course, ultimately responsible for this entire mess is Martin Jarmond, UCLA’s bumbling athletic director.

Jarmond was the one who refused to fire the Bruins’ previous coach, Chip Kelly, after several mediocre seasons. Jarmond was the one who set a self-imposed 96-hour deadline to find a new coach when Kelly suddenly departed the program to become Ohio State’s offensive coordinator. Jarmond was the one who hired the inexperienced Foster, who could end up being to UCLA what Gerry Faust was to Notre Dame.

Jarmond hasn’t just failed to revive UCLA football. He’s bludgeoned the program to the brink of death.

Jarmond didn’t attend the postgame news conference on Friday, leaving it to Foster to tell fans why they should return to the Rose Bowl for future games.

UCLA offensive lineman Garrett DiGiorgio (72) walks toward the sideline as New Mexico defensive end Darren Agu (10) celebrates stopping the Bruins on a fourth down play in the fourth quarter at the Rose Bowl on Friday.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

“If you’re a real Bruin,” Foster said, “you’ll still be a fan.”

UCLA can buy out the remaining three-plus years of Foster’s contract for upwards of $5 million, and Jarmond might as well be swept out with him whenever that happens, whether it’s during this season or after. With his track record, who could count on Jarmond to find the coach who will elevate the Bruins from college football purgatory?

By now, it’s clear Foster won’t be that coach.

The Bruins have not led at any point of any game this season. They were never ahead of Utah, which blew them out in their season opener. They were never ahead of the two Mountain West Conference teams they played in their two most recent games.

UCLA remains the only Big Ten team without a win, and the Bruins very well could have an 0-fer season.

Foster’s team has a couple of extremely beatable opponents on its schedule in Northwestern and Maryland. Then again, as these early-season games have proven, UCLA is also extremely beatable — maybe even historically beatable.