How is UCLA so bad at Football and Track & Field

UCLA should have done it the other way around. They should have fired Chip Kelly and kept Sean Brosnan.

Historically UCLA was seen as the basketball school and USC as the football school. Things can change over time but UCLA is still not viewed at the same level as USC in football so they are consistently outrecruited. In track USC was historically one of the dominant programs and over the last few years they've made a big push. UCLA had a brief period of competitiveness in the 70s and then in the late 80s. Since then they've never been able to regain any traction nationally. USC is about the only non-SEC school that can compete for the top sprinters. I think UCLA should eliminate track , lick their wounds and focus on basketball, soccer, volleyball and be content to be a 3rd tier football school.

UCLA has an administration problem. They will never be the powerhouse they once were at Track & Field and many other sports. Football has their hands tied with woke and bad administration making poor decisions. Chip can’t compete with these other schools. You put Chip back in Oregon and he would be successful again and those are facts.

Most top Colleges for Track and football are taking advantage of NIL scholarships and UCLA is still in the stone ages. Football still has their 80+ scholarships but Track only has their 18 and 12.6 to split between mens and women’s Track & Field with no NIL money. They need NIL to be competitive. The Big 10 will just hurt them as an athletic program. Having Avery Anderson also is not helping. Who is this guy and can he coach. No top HS athlete wants to run for him. The program is hanging in by a thread. I would not be surprised if they drop Track & Field completely in 2024. I heard this is why coach Allen left last year.

Seeing this post I had to jump on it. When Mia Brahe-Pedersen was looking for schools she was very interested in UCLA. She or her family never heard back and thought it was strange. Finally a friend of Mia’s family that knew a UCLA coach contacted them and said UCLA Track & Field program had high probability of getting dropped in 2024 before entering the big 10. They were still going through motions with some recruiting but didn’t bother with someone like Mia because the program is on its way out.
This is a very reliable source. Mia and her family we denied by UCLA for a reason.

Sure....

The UCLA Athletic Director is awful. He needs to go

I think the AD missed his chance to get rid of Chip Kelly last year. Their Basketball is not going to be anything halfway decent this year.

Alumni thought UCLA spent the bank when a decade ago UCLA went totally underground constructing 2 levels of underground parking under the main campus. Found out UCLA has one of the largest Confidential US Federal endowments and public endowments in the USA. It rivals USC, UCSB, Stanford, UCSD, UC Irvine, Cal Poly, and Berkeley. UCLA uses its endowments to fund massive projects. Why Berkeley and UCLA don't spend the money on Football and T&F like USC and Stanford does is an open mystery. Who knows?

Berkeley is too great an academic institution to be great at sports. UCLA is doing a good job of emulating Berkeley in both academics and prestige sports.

Kudos to USC for upping its academics, and it is interesting its sports achievement has dropped during the same time.

it seems to me the Californians are not so united as they'd have us think. Even L.A. can't make up its mind which university it likes best.

Then that rich ultra runner out in the mountains constantly thumbs his nose at the world. Is the California Dream about to end? Can the JPL and Lawrence Livermore labs think up a solution? When the bubble bursts, does the state even make anything real other than wine?

Huh?????

^ too much CA wine, can't read

Well, let's see... CA accounts for almost 70% of US production of fruits and vegetables. It is the #1 dairy state (not Wisconsin). Or, maybe you don't consider agricultural products to be "real"?

Serious question, when was the last time UCLA football or Track have been a contender for a conference title?

for hundreds of years the alumni of the top four Oly Medal schools care only about Oly Medals frankly.

USC is #1, Stanford is closing in at #2, UCLA is #3, and Cal is #4.

Those days are gone. UCLA cares about football and basketball and nothing else. And they are failing miserably at Football. Chip Kelly is getting 6M a year.

It's the So Cal, Hollywood, and L.A. culture to only value the Olympics. It's been that way forever and is why So Cal dominates the medal stand in international sports. Cal and Stanford are 2/3rds So Cal students and faculty.

UCLA was track power when this Gen X guy was there. The men won their second consecutive NCAA outdoor track and field title my first year there, so titles in 1987 and 1988. The women apparently won outdoor NCAAs in 1995. I frankly haven't paid attention to them after I graduated and kind of assumed they were still kind of good.

I don't follow football. The only football game I've even been to in my life was the 1990 UCLA-USC game where UCLA lost a close game (Todd Marinovich was USC quarterback), cementing the first losing season in decades for UCLA.