In Reply to: Jarmond discouraging, Frenk encouraging posted by Dr.Bruin on September 19, 2024 at 01:02:55
Jarmond tried to finesse Chip because he couldn't make the buyout payment of $4mm, already being $160mm in debt.
Let's stop here for a second. Ucla Athletics has bee insolvent, i.e, bankrupt, since 2019. How does a collection of bankrupt sports teams then go on to accumulate $160mm in debt? The only way is through the cumulative effects of unaccountable decision making that can only happen in the public sector. If this were a private sector enterprise, bankruptcy would've purged those responsible and restructured the enterprise in a way to ward off continuing failure years ago. That didn't happen. Guerrero got pushed out, but then Block replaced hims with a younger version, thinly experienced but entrenched government services bureaucrat. No purge, no restructuring, no decisive action or change.
We now need---must have---the purge. We need to remove, not reform. The entire cast and crew of Morgan Center needs to be ousted.
Football now needs professional, profit-oriented executive management talent if is to escape extinction. Relying on government services bureaucrats when CFB is becoming overtly professionalized into NFL, Jr. will lead to extinction when the further culling of superfluous teams reaches its next stage. That will be 7 - 10 years from now when cable TV gives way to streaming and the $7B/year that ESPN collects in carriage fees and ultimately pays to the conferences dwindles to zero.
We'll see what the new chancellor does sometime next year. He will need to replace Jarmond and replace him with a business executive, not another government services bureaucrat. He shouldn't stop there. He should empty the building.
Ucla will also need to stand up and put its brand behind a coordinated and persistent program to raise NIL or NIL-adjacent money to pay players. They need to embrace this, not shy away from it as they have been doing. They will need to be visibly supportive of paying the players and shed this obsolete, pretend world of the ideal student athlete who wants to come to Ucla to be "a Bruin". Those days are over and that whole image was never real in any case.
While Ucla and Morgan Center cowers, the world of CFB rapidly transforms itself into pro-football. This isn't to everyone's taste. If Ucla doesn't want to participate in that, we should find out by mid-2025. Should they choose to shy away from the new college football industry, it will be less than a decade before they shutter their football program.
The time is now to save the future of Ucla football.