general manager

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.

Jerry Jones was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma in 2010 but overcame it with the help of an experimental trial drug, the Dallas Cowboys owner revealed this week.

“I was saved by a fabulous treatment and great doctors and a real miracle [drug] called PD-1 [therapy],” Jones told the Dallas Morning News on Tuesday. “I went into trials for that PD-1 and it has been one of the great medicines.

“I now have no tumors.”

Jones told the Morning News that he was diagnosed with cancer in June 2010 and began treatment at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston soon after. In the decade that followed, Jones said, he underwent lung surgery twice and lymph node surgery two times as well.

He did not indicate when he began the PD-1 therapy.

According to the American Cancer Society, PD-1 is a protein that acts as an “off switch” to keep certain immune cells — T cells — from attacking normal cells. PD-1 inhibitor therapy blocks this protein to help the immune system better find and attack cancer cells.

Jones, 82, serves as the Cowboys’ president and general manager in addition to his role as owner. The first public mention of his diagnosis appears to have come during Episode 5 of the Netflix docuseries “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys,” which will be released Tuesday.

While telling an anecdote about a completely different subject — his relationship with former Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson — Jones casually mentions that “12 or so years ago … I had some cancer treatment” at MD Anderson.

The Morning News followed up on that comment during its wider-range interview with Jones.

Television executive James Stark Bennett II, known for developing talk show “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee,” has died at 78.

Bennett, who went by Jamie, died July 6 after a fight with cancer, according to his family.

He spent more than a decade at CBS, where he was an executive at television and radio stations in San Francisco and Chicago before coming to Los Angeles, where he served as vice president and general manager at KCBS-TV.

Bennett then moved over to the Walt Disney Co., where he served as senior vice president of Buena Vista Television Productions. In that role, he developed such shows as “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee,” “Siskel & Ebert” and the game show “Win, Lose or Draw.”

He later became president and chief executive at ACI, a Los Angeles-based TV and film distributor. When ACI was bought by Britain-based Pearson Television in 1995, Bennett and his family moved to London, where he ran the company’s worldwide production.

He eventually moved back to L.A., where he got involved in volunteer work and expanded his career beyond the entertainment industry by becoming chief operating officer at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. There, he was instrumental in helping the school establish its permanent base in L.A.’s Arts District, his family said. He also served on the board of the Ojai Music Festival, later becoming its president and CEO for five years until 2020.

Bennett was born in New York City on June 1, 1947. He later graduated from UC Berkeley, where he chaired a student-run summer program in Washington, D.C., and started his media career as the program director for the university’s radio station. After getting his MBA from Harvard Business School, he moved back to New York to take a job at CBS, which launched his media career.

He and his wife, Carolyn, eventually purchased an 11-acre farm in Ojai, which became their permanent residence. Bennett is survived by his wife, Carolyn, their three children and other family members.

Memo to Mark Walter:

Check your swing.

Now that you’re the majority owner of the Lakers, everyone is expecting you to whack their two most prominent leaders in hopes of transforming the basketball team into your baseball team, but you should instead initially act in terms your Dodgers would understand.

Take a pitch.

Keep Rob Pelinka and JJ Redick in their jobs … for now.

Agreed, this might be a tough call, and certainly there could be temptation to immediately can the two Lakers employees who most epitomize the incestuous decisions that have dragged the once-shining championship organization into dull mediocrity.

Pelinka, the president of basketball operations and general manager, was hired eight years ago because he was the agent and confidant of Kobe Bryant.

Redick, the head coach, was hired last summer because he was LeBron James’ podcast bro.

Neither man came to their current positions with strong qualifications. Both men were beneficiaries of a post-Jerry Buss culture in which daughter Jeanie would surround herself with friends and family.

It is a culture that led to outsized decision-making roles for the likes of Linda and Kurt Rambis. It is a culture that is diametrically opposed to the meritocracy that has made this town’s other glamour team so great.

Now that the Dodgers have basically swallowed the Lakers whole, it might be a foregone conclusion that Pelinka and Redick would be among the first to disappear.

Memo to Mark Walter:

Mark Walter, the controlling owner of the Dodgers, recently became a majority stakeholder in the Lakers.

(Emma McIntyre / Getty Images)

Hold up rounding third.

Both Pelinka and Redick have earned a chance to show their strengths in a new system in which there will certainly be increased scouting, advanced analytics and a new professionalism for an infrastructure that had been difficult for any official to succeed.

Ned Colletti was the Dodgers’ general manager when Walter’s group bought the team in the spring of 2012. He lasted two more seasons, Guggenheim Partners pouring money into the team and giving him every chance to succeed before firing him.

Pelinka deserves at least half that chance.

Don Mattingly was the manager when Walter bought the team. He lasted four more seasons, finally parting ways after the 2015 season.

Redick deserves at least a portion of that leash.

Although both men have been viewed as overmatched both in this space and by NBA insiders across the landscape, each has done well enough to not be summarily beheaded the minute Walter walks through the door.

Start with Pelinka. You do know he has an NBA championship on his resume, right? While Alex Caruso dismissed the 2020 title as phony last week after he won another ring with Oklahoma City, that first one still counts, and Pelinka still deserves credit for overseeing it.

Yes, Pelinka is the villain who ruined everything by letting Caruso walk while gutting the title team to acquire Russell Westbrook. But he’s also perhaps the only executive in NBA history to acquire three players the likes of LeBron James, Luka Doncic and Anthony Davis.

He had lots of help there — Magic Johnson recruited James, and James recruited Davis, and Nico Harrison handed him Doncic — but still, he was the final cog in making it happen.

Pelinka also engineered the splendid undrafted free agent signing that was Austin Reaves, which led to the Lakers finishing this season as the third seed in the West.

You don’t fire a decision-maker the same year his rebuilt team finishes third in basketball’s most competitive neighborhood. You don’t fire a decision-maker two years after his team reached the Western Conference finals. And you certainly don’t fire a decision-maker until you know what’s happening with his best employee.

It seems clear that James is going to opt in to his $52.6 million contract this week and remain with the team — and son Bronny — for at least one more season. If that’s the case, then Pelinka should get the chance to add the rim protector he’s been seeking to maximize Doncic and give James one more opportunity at a ring.

However, if James unexpectedly turns down the money to seek better title opportunities elsewhere — not a bad decision for the Lakers, honestly — then the ensuing roster chaos will not be the right time to make a change at the top.

Either way, the situation is fluid enough that Pelinka should be allowed to see it through.

The same goes for Redick, who did an admirable job in his first regular season before melting down in the playoffs.

Granted, some would consider his first-round series game management against the Minnesota Timberwolves a fireable offense, particularly in Game 4 when he used the same five players for an entire second half. He didn’t do himself any favors when he later reacted to criticism of that decision by bristling at a reporter’s question before stalking away from a pregame news conference.

During the most important moments of the season, Redick was in over his head. But as he admitted, he’ll learn, he’ll grow, he’ll get better, and he did well enough during the regular season to believe him.

Redick coached one team before the arrival of Doncic and the departure of Davis. He coached another team afterward. He deftly handled both of those teams while smartly disarming the potentially divisive distraction that was Bronny. Redick also empowered Reaves to become a legitimate third threat before Reaves joined his coach in a playoff disappearing act.

All of which brings this surprisingly sugary piece to this upcoming week, the start of the NBA’s summer madness, and the pressure is on.

Like it or not, Pelinka and Redick are a pair now, a tandem joined by the appearance of a new owner with new expectations.

Pelinka needs to find a big man who can help carry them deep into the playoffs. No matter who Pelinka acquires, Redick has to scheme around Doncic and make it all work.

They won’t get many chances under a new Dodger regime that demands sustained success, but they deserve at least one chance to take advantage of the massive changes that this new ownership group will surely create in returning basketball’s greatest franchise to new glories.

Memo to Mark Walter:

Keep Pelinka‘s and Redick’s names in the lineup card.

In pencil.