In Reply to: Top 10 transfer portal impact players of Week 6 posted by mh on October 07, 2025 at 10:30:08
I am only posting this article by Tracy Pierson because of how much I disagree. UCLA is not a sleeping giant. Some of the reasons are in this article.
Tracy writes about how we don't have competitive NIL money. That is not an accident. We have an athletic department that didn't get behind NIL.
Yes UCLA has a great location to attract talent with a big base of local talent. It's a great academic university, but that has advantages and disadvantages. It makes UCLA attracctive to some players and their families. However, it also excludes a significant portion of the talent pool.
UCLA has some massive disadvantages. !) The university is not as committed to sports as the powerhouses. A new chancellor isn't going to change that. It's part of the culture of the entire UC system. UCLA is VERY unlikely to ever value sports the way Ohio State, Michigan, SC, Wisconsin, etc do.
2) The atheltice department is a bureaucratic mess. Too many well entrenched people are not that good at their jobs. It would be VERY hard to change the culture.
3) The student culture at UCLA is not heavily based around sports. This is where the lack of an on-compus stadium hurts. But even with that, there are far too many students who are more focused on education than sports.
4) It doesn't help that students don't arrive on campus until well into the season.
5) Being in LA is great in many ways, but it is not a great sports town, particularly for college sports.
6) In football we will always be the other college tean in LA. We are the Clippers, not the Lakers. We are the Chargers, not the Rams.
Can UCLA be a lot better. Sure. A Jim Mora can show up and give us a couple of exciting seasons.
But is it a sleeping giant waiting for the right coach to show up? No. UCLA does not have the culture of an football superpower.