Scramble salvages Bruins' recruits

In the wake of Foster's firing, UCLA's football staff adds nine players to jump-start rebuild.

- BEN BOLCH

GINA FERAZZI Los Angeles Times BRUINS PLAYERS walk out the Coliseum tunnel for the finale of a whirlwind season. But the program added nine recruits, including four who recommitted.

The bad news was just getting started when UCLA's football recruiting staff learned that DeShaun Foster had been dismissed.

Coworkers would walk into the office of Khary Darlington, the team’s general manager, to give him one wretched update after another.

This player’s out. That player's out. A parent just called crying and confused.

"I mean,” Darlington said, “it literally felt like walking through a landmine field.”

Once they had answered every call and met with athletic department administrators and the remaining coaches to devise a framework for a recruiting process that had just become infinitely more complicated, Darlington and assistant general manager Steven Price started writing on a whiteboard inside the Wasserman Football Center.

Across three columns, the longtime former NFL scouts detailed a plan for the retention of committed high school prospects, the rebuilding of the recruiting class and the ways they would implement changes.

As he glanced at that same whiteboard late last week, some 2½ months later, Darlington beamed.

“I’m looking at the implementation column,” he said, “and it’s nothing but red check marks. That means we completed that task.”

Along the way, they salvaged a recruiting class ahead of the early signing period that starts Wednesday and may have jump-started the rebuilding efforts of Bob Chesney, the James Madison coach who is expected to be formally announced as Foster’s successor later this week.

Pulling this thing together sometimes meant just listening to an upset player or parent. Honesty about the uncertainty became a guiding principle.