If the Bruins survive under Ucla control (odds are against it), they will need a home stadium.
The campus already hosts a football stadium for their use. Drake occupies the same physical area that Stanford Stadium occupies in Palo Alto. But a new stadium ala Stanford isn't needed. As is, Drake could be enhanced to hold 40,000 seats simply by completing the existing, single-level seating to include the opposite sideline and the two endzones.
Every game would be a sellout. Students would be numerous in the stands. Broadcasts would beam positive images of the Bruins to the world and the program would have energy (if the onfield product is good). These will be important elements in the fast arriving streaming future.
All this talk about the "massive expense" of an on-campus stadium for the Bruins is gibberish. A 40,000 seat stadium could be ready in 24 months with a small capital investment.
The reason this isn't happening and hasn't happened isn't expense, lack of land on campus, engineering or logistics. The reason Drake remains an incomplete football stadium is that Ucla itself is a collection of spineless, mealy mouthed California bureaucrats who prefer to insulate their salaries and pensions by kowtowing rather than taking proper actions to boost the Bruin football team if a few feathers get ruffled. They prefer to dispatch the team to the hinterlands rather than host them on campus.
At Ucla, the single program your entire athletic department relies on for funding is disregarded and shipped off to a distant location. All to keep the bureaucrats happily employed. We're seeing the effects now in this new world of CFB: Ucla is for losers.
Ucla won't---not can't, but won't---choose to boost the Bruin football team.
Argue and chirp about the new coach all you want. It's boring and meaningless. A "better" coach is just a soggy bandaid on an open wound. Until Ucla itself is removed, the Bruin football program will contineu its fade into history.
They already are not part of D1 CFB. If you compare what Ucla delivers with its program to what's being delivered elsewhere around the country, there's not comparison. For all practical purposes, Ucla has already moved down to a FCS level program.
Perhaps Wasserman, with his nose in all things LA Olympics and using Ucla to host them can get the ball rolling. There's no sign of this and it's less probable than winning the lottery at this point. What is certain is that no one within Ucla itself will get this topic on the table, let alone but some muscle into it.