"Two years ago, reaching the first major crossroads of his UCLA athletic director career, Martin Jarmond drove the Bruins into a ditch. He should have fired the unhappy and unsuccessful Chip Kelly at the end of the 2023 regular season. He did not. He instead praised Kelly for building a "strong and phenomenal culture." Three months later Kelly fired himself with an escape that seemingly everyone but Jarmond saw coming."
"Requiring less than 72 hours to replace Kelly, Jarmond did so by hiring a head coach who was preeminently unqualified to be a head coach, a former running back who had never led a team at any level, a reticent former Bruin who had never even called a play. It took barely a season for that mistake to be formally acknowledged, and now that DeShaun Foster was fired Sunday after winning just five of 15 games, the real issue becomes obvious."
"But something has to happen. Hire a football general manager and let them pick the new coach while Jarmond moves to the background. Or simply pay Jarmond, let him walk, and start from scratch like you should have done two years ago at the end of the Chip Kelly era. Whatever happens, considering the huge stakes involved, how can Bruins chancel"
Martin Jarmond declined to fire Chip Kelly after the 2023 regular season, praising Kelly’s culture, and Kelly resigned three months later. Jarmond then hired DeShaun Foster within 72 hours, a former running back with no head-coaching experience who had never called plays. Foster went 5-15 and was fired less than two years into the job. The program suffered reputational and operational damage, and financial questions surround any leadership change given contract costs. Proposed remedies include hiring a football general manager to select a coach or paying Jarmond to leave and restarting the coaching search.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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