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Commentary: Bob Chesney is going to do the impossible at UCLA win Times columnist Bill Plaschke was skeptical Bob Chesney was capable of finally leading UCLA to Rose Bowl victories and beyond, but the coach won him over.
New UCLA coach Bob Chesney has flooded the Wasserman Center with fight songs, fist bumps and insistence that limits dont apply in Westwood.
From Salve Regina to Holy Cross and James Madison, Chesney built winners where skeptics said it couldnt be done.
With a favorable 2026 schedule, donors warming up and quarterback Nico Iamaleava on board, UCLAs football bandwagon is rumbling back to life.
Bouncing hurriedly in my direction was a bright-eyed kid with a huge smile.
I didnt know him.
He didnt know me.Yet as he passed, he suddenly stuck out his hand for a fist bump, which I was too stunned to ignore, and so I pounded back while wondering.
The new football coach has infused the completely rebuilt program into a place so energetic, his players run around sharing their inspiration to complete strangers.This shared spirit starts every morning in this building, in the team meeting room, where Chesney orders his players to stand and sing the school fight song as if they are standing on the field after a victory.
The words to the song are displayed on a giant screen, which increasingly isnt used because most of his players have now learned the song by heart.Those who fail to sing get tagged with a red laser pointer, so pretty much everyone croons.Im not gonna let people put limits on us, Chesney says.
Im not gonna let them tell us what we can and cant do.
This shared spirit continues deep into the night, as some of his players recently had a pool party at the home ofUCLA Unlocked: Inside Bob Chesneys football recruiting revival UCLA football general manager Darrick Yray shares how coach Bob Chesney and his staff have assembled a 2027 recruiting class ranked No.
12 nationally.He shows up for my early afternoon visit last week dressed uniquely for a $33.75 million coach of a Big Ten school on the outskirts of Hollywood.Lifting with the players, he says.
These guys are telling me what to do.
Full disclosure: I arranged my visit full of skepticism about this guy that has UCLA fans swooning.
The son of a small-town high school football coach in Pennsylvania coal country, Chesney had risen from obscurity to ..
more obscurity.He had previously coached at four different small schools you couldnt find on a map.
Salve Regina? Assumption? What?This will be Chesneys first shot under the bright lights.
And he is taking that shot with a program whose best shots couldnt hit the broad side of a barn.
The Bruins have not been to the Rose Bowl game in 28 years, and he is going to fix that? They have not won a Rose Bowl game in 41 years, and he was going to change that culture?The celebrated Chip Kelly couldnt do it.
The emotional Jim Mora Jr.
couldnt do it.
The cheerleading Rick Neuheisel couldnt do it.
The cerebral Karl Dorrell couldnt do it.The affable Bob Toledo thought he had done it until his team inexplicably quit on him just 60 minutes from a berth in the national championship game.
I had covered all of these coaches, hearing their annual promises, seeing their annual collapses, realizing USC had a stranglehold on the college football money and attention in this town, and I had come up with an inescapable conclusion.The best word to describe initial impressions of the 48-year-old former college safety would be, wow.
He talks fast.
He oozes belief.
He sells UCLA.He sells himself.
He doesnt shrink from his giant task.
He doesnt rationalize or equivocate his teams sordid history.I feel it, he says.
I feel it.
No wonder his recruiting has been phenomenal, ranked seventh nationwide for the class of 2027, a trend that began this summer with 42 transfers, many of whom will start.No wonder he has been recognized by fans while hanging out in West Hollywood or Griffith Observatory or Dodger Stadium, where hes already sat wide-eyed in a meeting with Dodger manager and UCLA gradDodgers manager Dave Roberts said he spoke with new UCLA football coach Bob Chesney multiple times during the search process and endorsed the hire.Everybodys included, he says.
You wanna be included? Cmon, youre included.
As the self-proclaimed driver of the Bruin bandwagon in recent years only to be derailed by midseason every time Ill pass on the inclusion.Ive got to see it before buying it.
But right now, Chesney has worked me up into such a lather that, yeah, Im believing.First, Chesney points to his resume, a litany of small schools who accumulated big victories, a dossier that includes only one losing season and none in the last seven years.
His head coaching career started at Division III Salve Regina , where he turned eight consecutive losing seasons into three straight winning seasons.
James Madison coach Bob Chesney and running back Wayne Knight celebrate after winning the Sun Belt championship on Dec.
5 in Harrisonburg, Va.Then there was Division II Assumption in Massachusetts, where he took a team that had two winning records in 17 years and led them to five consecutive winning records and three straight playoff appearances.
Then there was Holy Cross, also in Massachusetts, where he took the team to a record five straight Patriot League championships while advancing as deep as the FCS quarterfinals.They told us, The academics are too tough, the tuition is too high, you cant win there, Chesney recounts.
We won there.
Finally there was James Madison in Virginia, where he took a team whose stars had all followed Curt Cignetti to Indiana and still triumphed, leading them to a Cinderella appearance in the College Football Playoff.A lot of people doubted it, a lot of people didnt believe it could work, Chesney says.
Weve proved a lot of people wrong throughout the years.
Were back, baby! UCLA coach Bob Chesney restores Bruins festive spring game experience New UCLA coach Bob Chesney moved the Bruins spring game back to the Rose Bowl, stirring up fans and players to close fruitful spring practice.After his resume, Chesney points to his surroundings.
He is more awed by UCLAs gravitas than any other football coach I can remember.
Its clear he can sell the school because he has such respect for the school.Here youre a handshake away from changing your life ..
the school has an 8% acceptance rate, youre walking around this campus with valedictorians and future CEOs and doctors and lawyers, he says.
Youre surrounded by greatness, you have a chance to breathe this rare air that very few people get a chance to breathe.
But for Chesney to fill this air with a football championship requires a price.It is a price that, so far, many potential donors have been reluctant to pay.
But in todays college football world, it is the cost of doing business.
Longtime UCLA donor Angelo Mazzone chipped in $10 million recently, and more such gifts are needed for UCLA to be able to pay the players that bring them a championship.Theres a major financial commitment that comes with getting those four- and five-star kids, but we can really turn the tables with that kind of help, Chesney says.Every single thing that is needed is here, we just have to make sure we get the support from the people on the outside that we need to actualize our dream.
Even as his bosses are pushing to move the team out of the Rose Bowl to SoFi Stadium, he loves the Rose Bowl, and took his team there for its spring game on a weekend that began with him standing outside the brightly lit marquee with his father and his son in the dark.It was one of those moments, I was like, man, the history of this place ..
to me to play in the Rose Bowl, what an honor and a privilege, he says.
The game actually drew a decent spring crowd of 10,000-12,000, partially because Chesney had worked so hard at banging the drum.
He and his players even brought pizzas to various campus groups in hopes of enlisting support.Nico Iamaleava was dubbed the poster child for whats wrong with college football.
It turns out, hes everything right for UCLA.I guess were perceived to be in their shadow, and for whatever reasons we werent an option the last couple of years, but look at our recruiting, I know were becoming an option for L.A.
again, Chesney says.
I think you can change a lot of peoples opinions on who they want to be rooting for.
As in all levels of football, it all comes down to the quarterback, and Chesney had his first win by convincing budding star.The kid was roundly criticized in this space for holding out and then walking out on his Tennessee team last year, but he has since grown up, and could be the sort of game-changer that Chesney requires.Watching Nico with his athletic ability, his arm, creating plays after the play with his legs, I have very high hopes, says Chesney.
There are potentially outstanding transfers at half of the positions, and, with some solid returning players this is a team that beat seventh-ranked Penn State, remember the Bruins have a decent foundation.UCLA coach Bob Chesney pats running back Anthony Woods on the helmet during the teams spring game at the Rose Bowl on May 2.
Throw in a favorable 2026 schedule that doesnt include Ohio State or Penn State or Washington or Iowa, and one thinks they might even have a chance at making some miracles.Youre going to see a different brand of football, one that is united, that is passionate, that is physical, that is tough, that has a lot of fun playing together, he said.
Youre also going to hear a sound that died in the brief DeShaun Foster era, a sound that has never lasted more than a couple of weeks in the last 30 years.
That rumble is the Bruin football bandwagon.
Its revving up again.The inimitable force that is Bob Chesney wants to include you on the start of its journey.
Bill Plaschke, an L.A.
Times Sports columnist since 1996, is a member of the National Sports Media Hall of Fame and California Sports Hall of Fame.
He has been named national Sports Columnist of the Year nine times by the Associated Press, and twice by the Society of Professional Journalists and National Headliner Awards.He is the author of six books, including a collection of his columns entitled Plaschke: Good Sports, Spoilsports, Foul Balls and Oddballs.
Plaschke was also a panelist on the popular ESPN daily talk show, Around the Horn.
He is in the national Big Brothers/Big Sisters Alumni Hall of Fame and has been named Man of the Year by the Los Angeles Big Brothers/Big Sisters as well as receiving a Pursuit of Justice Award from the California Womens Law Center.
Plaschke has appeared in a movie , a dramatic HBO series and, in a crowning cultural moment he still does not quite understand, his name can be found in a rap song Females Welcome by Asher Roth.