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Bob Chesney is already putting some of his predecessors to shame.
Just imagine what might happen once the season starts.
All signs point toward a speedy revival given what UCLA’s new football coach has done over his first two months on the job after taking James Madison to the College Football Playoff.
He’s restocked the roster with a transfer portal class that’s ranked among the best in the nation. He’s restored high school recruiting relationships that had been neglected. He’s worked nonstop, renewing hope for a program that hasn’t won a conference championship since 1998 and seemed stuck in purgatory under Chip Kelly and DeShaun Foster.
“It’s just so under the gun — everything’s just a go right now, you know?” Chesney told the California Post in a wide-ranging interview. “There’s really no rest, there’s no time to breathe.”
His schedule that day made his point.
After rising before dawn in Houston, Chesney boarded a flight to Los Angeles and was immediately picked up by a recruiting operations staffer for a series of high school visits. He fit in this interview in mid-afternoon before heading to a dinner with a group of alumni.
The coach who will be introduced to fans at the Bruins’ basketball game against Indiana on Saturday, Jan. 31 discussed with the Post his early successes and the work that remains to be done before the season opener at California on Sept. 5:
You brought over both of your coordinators and several other assistants from James Madison and hired some people you haven’t worked with. What was the formula you used to assemble this staff?
It always starts with the competence piece first, right? Like, be good at what you do. I think that’s important. And then the next thing becomes their ability to connect, you know? What type of people are they and how well do they connect with the players and people in general and I think that was really important for me.
When I look at our guys and the kind of staff we assembled, I think they’re all really good, strong connectors. Not only that, I wanted them to be men of high character and I wanted the chemistry in that room to work really well and I think we got to our first staff meeting and hit the ground running and it’s been great ever since. I think we truly enjoy being around each other right now. I think everybody feels valued — that was all important.
But I knew I needed to keep continuity within the framework of offense, defense, special teams, strength and conditioning, you know? So some of the bigger-picture things that the lead guys in those rooms could sort of run with right away and hit the ground running and not have to slow down but bring in guys from different backgrounds that could help us continue to grow, you know? And not just say, ‘Hey, this is just how we do it’ but ‘Hey, this is what we’ve done and I’d like to hear what have you guys done and how is this similar or what things are we missing that could be done differently?’
So having that diversity in the staff is really important and I think also not only from different levels, but I wanted some guys to remain on staff here that have institutional knowledge and at the same point and time guys who have West Coast connections because I know that’s where obviously I’m deficient and I know I can’t just pick up and plug in the JMU program and say, ‘This is it, this is how it works.’ I need to make sure that I bring that balance and I am ready to adapt. People here definitely have to adapt a little bit to me, but mostly me and my staff have to adapt to our new home.
What should fans who aren’t familiar with your philosophy expect to see from your offense and defense and how heavily involved will you be in those schemes?
Yeah, I’ll be very involved in those schemes. Being a D-III coach and working up to D-II and FCS, you’re probably a little more involved than maybe you want to be where you’re involved in absolutely all of it at those lower levels because you just don’t have as many coaches or as many high-caliber coaches just based on the position and the finances that come with it, so that’s kind of how I started and along the way we’ve been fortunate enough to win a lot of games, so I would not really want to move away from that model a whole lot.
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But what should they expect to see? I would expect them just to see a disciplined team that absolutely plays extremely hard all the time regardless of the situation they’re in. Never counts themselves out, doesn’t put self-limitations on themselves and believes they can accomplish anything. Goes out there and is fundamentally sound, schematically competent, situationally aware and protects the football and does a good job of getting the football back and applying pressure just in all phases — in offense, defense and special teams. We want to be applying pressure all the time and playing with emotion and just passion for the game and belief in one another. I think you’ll see a united team.
How would you assess your success in the transfer portal after bringing in 41 players?
I think we did a really good job. I think that for the short period of time we had to work with and we have to just bolster this NIL piece of it, which we’re hoping to do in the immediate future, but it very quickly gave us a good understanding of what this market is really like. And I think we knew, but I think everybody’s going through it differently — I was just at the Bear Bryant Awards and we were talking about the way this market really accelerated in this past year. You know, guys that numbers most coaches had in their minds were sometimes doubled and tripled in this cycle, and I think that has a lot to do with there’s only one portal window, you’re not holding anything back and you’ve got to get it right because if you don’t get it right you don’t have a second chance to get it right, so I think that has a lot to do with sort of the feeding frenzy that exists at this moment.
But I thought we did a good job for what we had and what we needed to accomplish, I think there’s certain rooms that you could look at and just know that they needed to be totally rebuilt and I thought we did a really good job of that. I think that our coaches understood what we were looking for. I don’t think we relented on the type of people either. I think that in a world of speed dating, I think we got competent, really good football players, but I think as you walk through that building, you know you see them as genuinely good people as well and I think that’s important because we’re going to spend a lot of time together and I want to make sure that we’re focused on not just football but that we’re also surrounding ourselves with people that are sharing a common goal together and enjoy doing it because I think that’s where the real success comes from.
What would you say was your pitch to the transfers and was the recruiting process much easier with the guys you were trying to bring over from James Madison?
Yeah, you would think so. To some level it was, but we missed on really two or three of them that really got out of our price range and we couldn’t compete any more with, so that was a little bit different. But there were others that we were lower than their price range and still came and then there were others that we were spot on, so I think it all depended on what they were looking for and what was their intention of getting in the portal in the first place, right, I think is the real question.
But I thought we did fine with what we were not pitching but what we were presenting. You’re talking about the No. 1 public school in the country that’s positioned in an unbelievable spot within the second-largest media market with alums that carry a lot of weight and are going to help you with life after football, which I think is important on the most applied-to school in the country and a team that hasn’t won in the immediate past. You can be someone to come in here and make a huge impact and change the entire thought process about what modern-day UCLA football is.
I think that’s really what we were talking about, so if you want to make an impact, if you want a school that’s going to make an impact on you and if you want to be around good people that are going to give everything and pour it into each other every single day and at the same point know that we can help you get to the next level and not only develop you and get you to the next level but the level after the football level and what life looks like at 24, if you make this decision with us, but also what life looks like at 44 if you make this decision with us. I think those are things that I feel confident about that what we have here at UCLA and certainly can set them up for both of those futures.
You’ve said one of the things that fueled your success was listening. Has there been anything you’ve heard since you’ve taken the job that’s either opened your eyes a little bit or changed your approach to having success at UCLA?
I think the one thing that I just needed to understand was just the inner workings of the amount of people that have their hands on each of these top-tier recruits on the West Coast. From seven-on-seven coaches to handlers to agents to parents to high school coaches to trainers. You know, there could be six to seven different people that are connected and have some say in the decision process of these kids, where a lot of times on the East Coast, especially in the northeast, it’s the high school coaches and that’s the end of the story. That’s not necessarily what rings true here, so we have to do a good job of understanding who those players are in each of these scenarios and making sure we’re doing a good job of connecting with them as well because if they’re going to have an impact on the decision in some way, we have to make sure that we’re doing a good job of communicating our message and our plan for that player.
You’ve expanded the recruiting staff and have been visiting a lot of high schools. How pleased have you been with the connections you’ve built and were you told by those coaches that your outreach was at a level that it hadn’t been from UCLA recently?
Yeah, especially today because today I was more in the public school area of downtown L.A. So I think being in there, it’s just something that they commented on that they had never seen — I think Jim Mora, they said, was through before, but since that they haven’t seen someone come through here at all. So I wasn’t looking for that necessary response — I wasn’t looking for any response, I was just doing my job and it was kind of cool to hear that because it just made me really understand that there’s some low-hanging fruit here that we can really help build these relationships up again if they were lacking and there’s no reason for that to be, so I feel confident about that.
Bob Myers, who was on the selection committee, said you would be supported with resources that put UCLA in the top third or top quartile of the Big Ten. Have you seen any evidence of that?
I don’t necessarily 100% know the answer to that question as far as what other people have. From what I’m gathering and learning, I would say there’s areas where we might be and then there’s areas where we’re probably not. I just know that in recruiting, when Oregon or Ohio State — or name a school in the Big Ten or the SEC — when they want a guy, they seem to have the funds to get a guy at all costs and I know that that’s not necessarily the case here. But I think that there’s probably things that we are and there’s probably others that we aren’t, and I think that sort of comprehensive look in getting some true behind-the-scenes quantifiable data to help us do like a gap analysis, I think, is necessary. I don’t know that we definitely have all the resources to get those answers as cleanly as we might want, but I would say that there’s things that we’re probably right on par and there’s others that we’re pretty far behind. I think that that’s something that we have to do a good job of understanding and attacking and a lot of it’s going to have to do with our alumni base and just their ability to compete with a modern-day football program because a lot of it is controlled by that.
Along those lines, where do things stand with the team’s NIL endeavors through Men of Westwood and what needs to be done to get that aspect operating at the level you want?
Well, I think it’s similar to recruiting, right? I think there has to be access and I think we have to do a good job of making sure that they understand the commitment and what it’s going toward and how much it affects this program. I think, again, giving them quantifiable data and real-life anecdotes into where this has allowed us to have success, but I think everyone will be hesitant initially and I think that’s natural. I think when we start seeing this recruiting class that we put together that’s probably is one of the better ones that I would imagine has come through here in the transfer portal world — I would imagine it’s one of the better ones — I think that gives you a little bit of trust. Then I think when you start learning a little more, coming around to a winter practice and a spring practice and start saying, ‘OK, well, this gives me a little more trust into how things are being done’ and then eventually we get on the field and see the product that’s out there, I think that enables people to say, ‘They need our help and I love what they’re doing and I want to be part of this.’ I think that’s ultimately what we need to do, but that starts with us ultimately, you know, and then it trickles down to the belief that we’re investing in something that is going to have a positive return.
Have you set a spring practice schedule and know when it will start?
We’ll start in April after we get back from spring break and as of today we’re gonna go Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday with a Friday or two mixed in there all the way until we reach our 15 practices.
What will you be looking to get out of those practices?
Well, as coaches, a good understanding of our ability and our depth, a good understanding of how our players react and handle the new scheme, how they react and handle the pressure, what type of game are they playing? Is it a discipline game, is it a well fought-out, sort of reactive game where they sort of control the emotion of it or is it an impulsive game that leads to many mistakes — those are the questions that, to me, when you’re coming off a 3-9 season, there’s a lot that needs to be answered quickly. I think right now in the weight room, I love watching their unity and what they do and we’ll continue to push them into the winter segment of this and make there be some challenging, physical, conditioning-type days and then after that, we head into spring ball. That is really the moment where we finally put those pads on and just start to see exactly what we’re made of.
Can you talk more about the unity in the weight room you just mentioned?
Yeah, well, right now we’re just in a spot where they’re with coach [Chris] Grautski, our strength coach, and we lift as two different groups — as our skill players and then as our bigger line players. There’s running that happens every day, just a bit of conditioning and form running that we initially do for these first three weeks and then when that’s done, we break into five different teams and when we break into those five different teams they’ll just be immense amounts of competition going on in almost every single thing that we do. It’s going to be where they draft the teams themselves and then they’re accountable to those teams in many different things, from weight room to physical — whether it be endurance running or some competition out on the field or in the weight room or whether it’s something as simple as our locker room being kept clean, whatever it might be, there’s a million different things that we want them to understand it all matters. We can’t win games until we play them, which is somewhere in September, but at the same point and time, what you do today certainly effects your ability to win those games at a later date.
You’ve spoken about the importance of engaging fans and other members of the UCLA community. What have been the early efforts to do that?
Yeah, well, I think it was the early phases of around the [introductory] press conference getting to meet people. [Athletic director] Martin [Jarmond] has brought around a few alums from basketball games that came over and had a chance to meet with us. I’ve had one or two guys reach out to some of our players and start a mentorship program that we’re trying to get off the ground. Tonight, we have an event with 15 or 20 different alums that we’re going to have a chance to share a dinner with here and be present with them.Then for me when I get out in the community right now in recruiting, if there’s someone in that community who’s from UCLA, I try to make sure that I meet up with them and say ‘Hi’ at least and show some face, including just doing that today as we went through my day that was something we’re doing whenever I can. So as much as I can interact, as much as I can be engaged in those moments are things that I really want to be able to continue to do and I feel like we’re on the right track.
You’ve said success in Year 1 would be winning, but is there a record or some sort of tangible threshold that would satisfy you?
No, I just don’t think we should have limits on it and I don’t want to put down an arbitrary number, but I don’t think that any of us should have limits on what we can do, right? Why put self-imposed limits on it? I think you’ve got to dream big here and you’ve got to think big and then you’ve got to act big and you’ve got to play big and those are things that I don’t want our guys to even think about. I want them to think about the day-to-day process of how hard can they go today, win their meeting with their position coach. Did they do it better than any other team in the Big Ten? Did they lift weights better than any other team in the Big Ten and just the constant thought of, am I absolutely giving my 100% best, am I putting myself in a situation — and not about comparison necessarily but to the point of that is the absolute best that I can take a note in this meeting today, or that is the absolute best that I could move this weight in the weight room today or that is my absolute best that I could whatever it is. Those are the things that I want them to be thinking about every single day, that they have to be elite, they have got to be their best and they have to do that every single day.
What do you think will be the most important factor in determining how the team fares in 2026?
I think that’s staying focused on their daily improvement, them being able to take coaching and being able to ignore the outside noise, pay attention to the people in that building and in their [position] rooms and not get emotional about it. Put themselves in a spot where they are just focused on correcting the motion over and over again, removing emotion and know that every single day you get up, you have a chance of being a better version of yourself. As long as we’re doing that on a day-to-day basis — not worry about any of the outside stuff, focus totally on our improvement and being better than I was the day before — I think that will affect our team in a major way more than anything else.
Is there anything you’d like to add about your start at UCLA?
Yeah, I just want everybody to keep thinking big. I want everybody to keep imagining this program being what they would hope it would be and I know everybody’s hopes are different, but I just say that as I sit with these recruits as well — it’s the same conversation. Don’t tell me you just like the defense we run or your coach — like, think big here; this is a place that could change your life for the rest of your life. We all have these moments in our life where we make a decision that you can pinpoint this one decision that set up the rest of our lives — good or bad — and I think here with the location and alumni and support and school and all the things that come with it, this is a decision I think we all should make, support and get behind and just dream big and know that we’re all impactful. More so than it’s ever happened in the history of college football before, we can impact this team — we all can impact this team in ways bigger than we ever dreamed, so just keep dreaming big and keep getting involved. That’s all.
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