In Reply to: Re: Will Ucla do 'revenue sharing' even if the House settlement... posted by confused442 on April 09, 2025 at 13:23:51
When Mora had some initial success, we upgraded facilities and salaries. We also retained him when UW tried to hire him.
UCLA went all-in when they hired the top coaching name at the time, Chip, beating out Florida. It also afforded him a huge budget for his nutrition program.
A combination of factors have brought us to where we are today. We've made some bad hires (Dorrell, Neuheisel), had some bad luck (later Mora, Chip), and have just been passed and even lapped by so many other programs who are hungrier, smarter, and richer.
Today, with a small piggy bank, basically a high school level head coach, a tuned out/non-expanding fanbase, and a discouraged donor class, it's even harder to see us being relevant again.
I've been on this board a long time too and I never thought we were quite out of it until the last couple of years. Even up until Chip we were regularly beating Oregon and national-level programs for a decent share of recruits. That is almost unthinkable now.
Yet, fans will always hold out some hope. I will still hope that Sunseri can inject some magic into the program, such that we can wake the donors up and start buying good enough players to sneak into the 12-team playoff.