Put down the tomatoes, UCLA football fans. Rest your weary arms for a bit.
Maybe even for a good bit, time will tell. But for now, a win.
Victory in process, a W in the competence column, three cheers and an 8-clap for hope.
On Monday morning, the reports came in: UCLA has hired Bob Chesney as its new football coach.
Whenever his 11-1 James Madison team completes its season – either after it faces Troy this week in the Sun Belt championship game on Friday or following the College Football Playoff, if the Dukes get in – Chesney will take the wheel of UCLA’s sputtering squad.
His reported five-year deal – done, according to Southern California News Group sourcing – is the culmination of a buttoned-up, drama-free search, in noticeable contrast to the SEC’s messy sideshow of Lane Kiffin spurning Mississippi for LSU.
UCLA’s search committee, which included Casey Wasserman, Bob Myers, Adam Peters and Eric Kendricks, drew up a different route from what we’re used to from the Bruins. Instead of going back to the well that is the NFL or, alternately, choosing to promote someone in-house as they have with each hire since 1971, this search targeted an up-and-coming talent from the Group of Five. A modern choice, a smart and safe choice, as far as these decisions go.
A rare win for the football folks in Westwood, landing Chesney. He’s a 48-year-old, originally from Kulpmont, Pennsylvania, and he has a track record of successful rescue attempts – impressive enough that he also reportedly was sought after by Penn State and Virginia Tech.
He’s a crowd-pleasing hire and a potential salve for restless, disillusioned Bruins fans who have had to endure mediocrity and now losing, and who might also be losing their iconic home-field advantage if the university trades the Rose Bowl for SoFi Stadium.
Wherever he coaches his home games, UCLA hopes Chesney can continue following in the footsteps of Curt Cignetti, the coach he replaced at James Madison in 2024 after Cignetti left for Indiana.
At Indiana, Cignetti continued his career as a turnaround artist by immediately making the Hoosiers one of the best teams in the country, including a College Football Playoff participant in Year 1.
We’ll soon find out whether Chesney can follow a similar blueprint with a UCLA program that has had just two winning seasons in the past 10.
His track record sells the promise, at least.
When he was hired at Division 3 Salve Regina University in Rhode Island, he took a team that had eight consecutive losing seasons and led it to three consecutive winning campaigns.
At Assumption College in Massachusetts, he steered a Division 2 program with only two winning records in the 17 previous seasons to five consecutive winning seasons and three straight NCAA Tournament appearances.
At Holy Cross, he led a program that had won more than seven games only once in 13 years to five conference titles and four trips to the FCS playoffs.
James Madison was the first stop on Chesney’s fix-it tour, where he was tasked with maintaining success instead of introducing it. But even then, he had to win with a team that featured 64 newcomers in 2024 and 54 this season. And, yes, yes he could. The Dukes – possibly CFP-bound this season – boast the top scoring offense and defense in the Sun Belt.
“We’ve always been a little behind every place I’ve been,” Chesney told The Athletic recently. “We usually leave ahead.”
Well, in that sense, the Bruins are his kind of team – behind.
They just finished this season at 3-9, with a predictable 29-10 loss to USC punctuating the lost season. Since Sept. 14, they were stewarded by interim coach Tim Skipper, who stepped up in place of DeShaun Foster, the former UCLA running back great who was fired from his first head coaching job after losing 10 of his first 15 games, including the first three to start this season.
Chesney gets to takes the wheel of a program that was thrown into reverse and that has been stuck going the wrong way after Chip Kelly’s unfulfilling 35-34 stint dating to 2018.
All the quotes on the movie poster make you want to believe more Chesney Magic could be ahead, that he really could get the Bruins going the right way – right away.
“He’s the type of guy who can walk into a restaurant and have you convinced that their french fries are the best in the world,” James Madison defensive coordinator Colin Hitschler told The Athletic.
“Coach Chesney knows how to win,” Holy Cross senior safety Chris Riley said in 2019, to Worcester’s Telegram and Gazette.
Mike Uva, a former defensive back for Holy Cross, to the Daily News-Record in 2023: “When he came in it was night and day different in the way that he prepares, the way he’s in command and the way he operates.”
Of course, all of Chesney’s comeback stories have happened on the East Coast. None of them has come under the big-time glare of the Big Ten Conference, of Los Angeles. None of them have had the added hassle of navigating University of California politics, or an unresolved home stadium situation. He’s never plunged into waters quite so choppy, and not nearly so deep.
So, we’ll see. We’ll see whether all the people who are so pleased with Chesney’s hire are as pleased with Chesney in a season or two.
But in the meantime, it’s fair to think that an astute hiring process could forecast to an astute football process, too – and that that could be enough to save the day.