The fix is to carve football off (as Chip had suggested some time ago when asked) and allow it to be managed separately from the rest. We need business talent now, not the pension seeking, salary sucking government services bureaucrats that "elite" Ucla provides.
We've reached a point in 2025 where Ucla must choose either to throw its brand behind football to spur NIL growth and any hope of a talent resurgence or maintain the status quo with the usual Guerrero-Block-Jarmond sanctimony of "doing it the right way". The stupidity of this approach was on display in Pasadena last night, contrasted by Oregon with its updated, modern approach of overtly buying top talent. The old Ucla approach produces stupid results but does insulate Jarmond from career risk. Oregon's approach produces competitive outcomes.
As the contrast between Oregon and Ucla clearly showed last night, there is only getting talent or going out of business. Oregon is buying talent, Ucla is going out of business.
Ucla needs to choose its path and the new chancellor will choose next year. He either shakes the status quo and puts the "vaunted" Ucla brand directly into, in front of, and behind the football team by openly, actively and enthusiastically embracing NIL, or he stays with the trash we currently have, and Jarmond can continue hiding in his apron skirts. The first path would be a bridge to a permanent, specialized executive football management, while the latter path of staying with Morgan Center will lead to Ucla being culled from CFB in time.
At 72, I'd bet he's probably just keeping the chair warm for a few years, but time will tell. Hope springs eternal.
Without a shakeup, what we saw last night will become normal.
For now, we created a bind by running off a clever football man who got the most of the skimpy financial resources he had while leaving the inevitable 2025 rebuild to a disorganized, inexperienced, unimaginative coach who's greatest achievements are athletic (suspended for breaking the rules), not executive.
Good luck with that. The big dumb self-referencing "elite" blob known as Ucla will have to choose, and the time is quickly approaching.