Stop Jarmond from hiring next coach

Two years ago, reaching the first major crossroads of his UCLA athletic director career, Martin Jarmond drove the Bruins into a ditch.

- BILL PLASCHKE

DESHAUN FOSTER'S zeal was a key factor in his hiring, but his inexperience showed in his first game.

He should have fired the unhappy and unsuccessful Chip Kelly at the end of the 2023 regular season. He did not. He instead praised Kelly for building a “strong and phenomenal culture.”

Three months later Kelly fired himself with an escape that seemingly everyone but Jarmond saw coming.

Soon thereafter, upon reaching the second major crossroads of his athletic director career, Jarmond drove the program into an even deeper ditch.

Requiring less than 72 hours to replace Kelly, Jarmond did so by hiring a head coach who was preeminently unqualified to be a head coach, a former running back who had never led a team at any level, a reticent former Bruin who had never even called a play.

It took barely a season for that mistake to be formally acknowledged, and now that DeShaun Foster was fired Sunday after winning just five of 15 games, the real issue becomes obvious.

Martin Jarmond has steered this football program into a steaming wreckage, failing to properly manage the most important asset of any modern-day athletic director, turning the Bruins’ largest and most lucrative national presence into a sputtering embarrassment, and you have to wonder.

Now that he has buried them, is Martin Jarmond the right person to dig them out?

It's difficult to imagine the budget-conscious UCLA administrators would spend about $8 million to fire a guy who just last winter was given a five-year contract extension. Then again, they just spent $6.43 million to can Foster less than two years after they hired him.

But something has to happen. Hire a football general manager and let them pick the new coach while Jarmond moves to the background. Or simply pay Jarmond, let him walk, and start from scratch like you should have done two years ago at the end of the Chip Kelly era.