The world according to Jim:
• If indeed Saturday night’s game against Washington will be the last football home game UCLA plays at the Rose Bowl – and I’m not at all convinced that will be the case – this will be the latest, and most egregious, unforced error by an athletic department that hasn’t exactly served its flagship sport admirably over the past decade. …
• And yes, you can criticize that “flagship sport” characterization because UCLA is a basketball school, but football at UCLA pays most of the athletic department’s bills, as it does everywhere big-time football is played. What has occurred in UCLA’s program the past eight seasons is tantamount to administrative malpractice. …
• The idea of abandoning the Rose Bowl – a stadium synonymous with the soul of college football – for SoFi Stadium seems strictly tied to travel distance, 14 miles down the 405 Freeway as opposed to 26.2 miles from Westwood to Pasadena on the 134 Freeway. But let’s remember that not everyone who follows UCLA football lives on the west side of L.A.
Otherwise it makes little sense. SoFi is a magnificent edifice, certainly, and a worthy host to NFL football, but it’s not suited for the college football environment – the tailgating culture, alumni outreach, etc. And does UCLA really want to be SoFi’s third tenant? …
• This move – which, remember, would break a lease with the Rose Bowl that runs through 2044 – isn’t going to heal what ails UCLA football. This is a program that has slipped competitively, is struggling to keep its head above water in the Big Ten and has tumbled toward the bottom tier in its own intensely competitive sports market. …
• It is not hard to find the exact point that things changed: Nov. 19, 2017. That was the day that athletic director Dan Guerrero fired Jim Mora Jr., one day after a third consecutive loss to USC. And maybe it wasn’t letting Mora go, after a 46-30 record in five-plus years at the school, as much as it was the guy they replaced him with. …
• Chip Kelly had little interest in recruiting and less interest in helping promote the program, and I think by this point it’s evident that the success he had at Oregon (46-7 in four years) was less his doing and more that of a program that had already established momentum and has become a true juggernaut in succeeding years.
You can make the case, in fact, that Phil Knight’s support and its contribution to Oregon’s stature in college football covered up the flaws that would become evident at Kelly’s other stops, the Eagles and 49ers in the NFL and then UCLA. …
• Chip was 35-34 at UCLA, and 10-21 in his first three seasons. By the time the Bruins were in position to actually get to bowl games, fans had gotten out of the habit of going to the Rose Bowl.
In Mora’s first five years UCLA’s average reported home attendance figures (we’ll explain that qualification below) were 65,573 (2012), 70,285 (2013), 76,703 (2014), 66,858 (2015) and 66,723 (2016). In Kelly’s tenure, average home attendance dipped to 50,172 in 2018, his first season, and all the way down to 37,399 in 2022. Reported attendance the last three seasons: 47,950 in ’23, 49,162 last season and 37,098 in the first five home dates in 2025. …
• And it’s worth considering an L.A. Times report at the start of this season that revealed years of padding those reported totals, where the announced total attendance – including unused tickets distributed, credentialed and non-ticketed individuals (media, participants including cheerleaders and band, etc.) – was in many cases significantly higher than the actual scanned tickets. …
• So, today’s quiz: Over the past eight years – and remember, in 2020 nobody was allowed into stadiums during the COVID-shortened schedule – UCLA has drawn more than 60,000 to the Rose Bowl four times. How many of those can you name? Answer below. …
• Meanwhile, is the Big Ten itself not so much of a happy family any more? The conference’s proposed $2.4 billion venture capital deal with UC Investments, the pension fund for University of California employees, for a 10% stake in Big Ten Enterprises has encountered stiff opposition from USC and Michigan as well as dissent from board members of other universities who claim they’ve not been informed of the specifics of the deal, even as commissioner Tony Petitti pushes to get it approved.
Gee, does it seem that bigger – in this case a sprawling, 18-member coast-to-coast conference assembled willy-nilly – is not necessarily better? …
• Things we wish we’d written: A lot of these come from our former colleague, Mark Whicker, and he made this observation in his Substack newsletter the other day while ruminating about punters:
“In the 2008 playoffs, the Chargers’ Mike Scifres was the dominant player in a win over Peyton Manning and the Colts. Indianapolis reacted by drafting Pat McAfee to punt. We’re all suffering the aftereffects of that.” …
• A sign that this world hasn’t completely gone off kilter: Roger Federer is elected to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility, and will be inducted next August in Newport, R.I., along with commentator Mary Carrillo. …
• Quiz answer: UCLA has had only four (reported) 60,000-plus home crowds in 44 games: 60,867 for Fresno State in 2018 (a good number from Fresno), 68,123 for LSU in 2021, 70,865 for USC in 2022 and 71,343 for Colorado (and Deion Sanders) in 2023. …
• Is anyone else shocked that Lane Kiffin, that symbol of stability, is facing questions at Ole Miss about whether he’s going to stay even as (a) his team is 10-1 and seems headed for the College Football Playoff and (b) the coaching vacancies at conference rivals LSU and Florida entice him.
Yeah, it’s a long way from being fired at 3 in the morning in an airport conference room. …
• Randy Jones, who passed away this week from throat cancer at age 75, made his mark in San Diego but was an Orange County guy, attending Brea Olinda High and Chapman University, where he was drafted by the Padres in 1972 as a fifth-round pick. He would win 100 games and compile a 3.42 career ERA for the Padres and Mets while pitching for some really bad teams. In 1976, he won 22 games and a Cy Young Award – with 25 complete games in 40 starts – for a team that was 73-89.
He wouldn’t have gotten drafted today, with a fastball that seldom broke 80 mph; he liked to say that the harder he threw, the less the ball moved. But he knew how to pitch, and he didn’t waste time. When he started, more often than not the game was done in around two hours.
And he was a good guy, who remained involved with the team and with the San Diego community the rest of his life. He will be missed.
jalexander@scng.com