LOS ANGELES — Cole Martin traversed the Pasadena hills with his teenage friends, walking back to his friend’s home dejected. The hurt was on at the Rose Bowl, the UCLA football team unable to keep up with the rushing attack of the Texas A&M Aggies. With the Bruins trailing 38-10, the damper of a season opener was no laughing matter.
The son of a Bruins assistant coach, he didn’t want to depart the sideline zone for recruits and family members nor the stands while the Bruins played. Win or lose, Martin believed in UCLA – filled to the brim with players he grew up adoring, such as Darnay Holmes and Jaleel Wadood – and believed in the players his father mentored on and off the field.
But on he went, walking out of the hallowed grounds and onto the streets of Pasadena as the third quarter got underway and the Aggies grew their lead to 44-10.
“We started walking, and one of my friends had a phone,” Martin said. “He’s like, ‘They’re coming back.’ And I was like, ‘What? What? What?’”
“We ran back,” he said.
Gasping for oxygen outside the gates of the Rose Bowl, with no re-entry, Martin watched through the glimpses of the big screen inside the stadium. Quarterback Josh Rosen hoisted the Bruins to one of the greatest games Spieker Field laid witness to – a fake spike catching the Aggies’ secondary off guard, the pass of destiny landing in the hands of Jordan Lasley as UCLA escaped with an at-times unthinkable 45-44 comeback victory.
Then just a middle schooler with football dreams, Martin waited to be let back inside the Rose Bowl concourse. He found his dad and celebrated. The Pop Warner do-it-all son of UCLA defensive backs coach Demetrice Marin was very much a member of the Bruins – whether he was just a kid or not – and those memories are part of why Cole Martin considers himself a lifelong Bruins fan.
Cole Martin, now 21 and a redshirt sophomore defensive back in Westwood, unknowingly reenacts that same Rosen-to-Lasley play with his father before every game.
Demetrice Martin tosses passes to the defensive backs corps into that same far-left sideline area, the ball leading players like Cole Martin into the pylons just like Lasley did on Sept. 3, 2017.
“It takes you back, takes me back to when he was just three, four years old, and we go to the park,” Demetrice Martin said. “We just got more people watching us now.”
Two years ago, the father-son pair were at Oregon together.
A year ago, Demetrice was in East Lansing at Michigan State, and Cole redshirted a season at Arizona State.
The year apart tested Cole Martin, a hip labrum injury keeping him sidelined for the majority of the Sun Devils’ season, playing in just two games. Sundays were harder. Cole Martin was trying to keep up with Michigan State’s game film to discuss football with his dad, and Demetrice Martin was tuning into Arizona State to dissect his son’s performances.
Three teams in three years is hardly what any coach or player would expect – even in today’s transfer-portal world of college football. But it was the reality for father and son, who both said their relationship on the field resembles more coach and player.
“When this all came about, to be able to come back home to UCLA and have the opportunity to work back here,” Demetrice Martin said, “where he was just a little chap playing Bruin ball on the Bruins camps and all that kind of good stuff, it was like, ‘Look, man, we could do this right down the street from grandparents and family and all that kind of stuff where you played Pop Warner ball.’”
Demetrice Martin continued: “It was like, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’”
Both sets of Cole Martin’s grandparents attend his games in Pasadena.
His mom, brother, and sister come in from Arizona to watch him play – and his oldest sister, Kori Martin, who runs track at Kentucky, pesters him with postgame messages from the opposite side of the country. For the Martin family, returning home to where Demetrice coached in Westwood from 2012 to 2017 – and to Pasadena, where Cole was born and raised – is an event worth celebrating.
Cole Martin looks up to Holmes, having attended his high school games in Calabasas for four years while his dad recruited the future NFL player to UCLA. He considers himself a “football brainiac,” picking the brains of all of the future professionals his dad has had a hand in developing.
Holmes and Cole Martin have remained close, a connection spanning more than a decade. When the current Las Vegas Raiders cornerback returns home, Cole Martin practices alongside him.
Now, much like Holmes was, he’s one of the leaders of the Bruins’ secondary. Cole Martin has already set career highs in his redshirt junior campaign, collecting 41 total tackles and three passes defended through seven games. Against Maryland last week, in which UCLA (3-4, 3-1 Big Ten) claimed a 20-17 victory, Martin helped power a defensive effort that recorded 13 pass breakups, UCLA’s most in a decade.
The 5-foot-9 safety, whose offensive experience carrying the ball is capped in youth football, has also successfully taken two fake punts for first downs.
Cole Martin joked that he can’t pass the ball, so don’t count on a trick play with a throw in his repertoire.
He’ll leave that to his Pops.
The belief – such a belief that’s been on display for UCLA’s season turnaround of three consecutive victories that began with an upset win over then-No. 7 Penn State – stems from that night waiting outside the Rose Bowl.
Demetrice Martin led his secondary unit to a shutdown second half against Texas A&M. Cole Martin hoped to glimpse a stunning victory and awaited to celebrate with his dad. Now they can celebrate together; the lessons from UCLA vs. Texas A&M remain in Cole Martin’s memory.
The game is never over. The season is never over.
Not for the Martins.
“Even going back to our record at the beginning of the year, it didn’t matter,” he said, “because it’s never over.”