LOS ANGELES — As Bob Chesney walked to the podium in the Luskin Hotel ballroom on UCLA’s campus, a Bruin-branded football rolled off the table in front of the 48-year-old as he whisked by.
Chesney, introduced Tuesday morning as UCLA’s 20th head football coach, pointed at athletic director Martin Jarmond.
“Ooh, that’s not good,” Chesney said, before laying down a joke.
“That was you that fumbled it – not me,” he said.
In years past, such a moment before Chesney’s opening remarks, just minutes after first addressing his new football team in the Wasserman Football Center, could’ve been viewed as a negative omen – a reminder of the rollercoaster, and as-of-late laughing state, of UCLA football, which stumbled to a finish of a historically bad 2025 season just weeks ago.
But across the next 40 minutes, through an energetic opening statement and 28 minutes of questions and answers with the Los Angeles media corps, Chesney never looked down at notes. Comfortable, dressed in a dark blue jacket with gray stripes and a UCLA pin on his collar, his eyes pierced the reporters in front of him as he fired with lengthy speeches on what it’s going to take to win in Westwood
“The search committee was laser-focused on landing a program builder who will represent UCLA the right way and who will instill a winning expectation – the mentality that every time we play, the expectation is to win, without a shadow of a doubt,” Jarmond said. “Coach Bob Chesney is that person.”.
Bob Chesney had officially arrived at UCLA.
“You come here to UCLA, and everything I loved about every place I’ve ever been is all packaged in one, right here,” said Chesney, who will fly back to Virginia to prepare No. 12-seed James Madison for its first-round College Football Playoff game against No. 5 Oregon next week. “It’s all here, and it’s all present here.”
He continued: “I see zero reason why we cannot be competing for a championship.”
UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk waxed about the important symmetry between athletics and academics – of which Chesney learned as an assistant at academically focused Division III Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, calling him “a transformational hire.” And Jarmond spoke of what led Chesney to become UCLA’s football coach, describing him as the “engine” of every successful program he’s touched (to a 132-51 overall record across 16 seasons).
“Bob is a guy you bet on,” said Bob Myers, UCLA alumnus and former Golden State Warriors general manager, who served on the hiring committee.
Myers, who spent multiple months since UCLA fired head coach DeShaun Foster in mid-September, interviewing and vetting potential coaching candidates, said he knew Chesney was fit for the Bruins when he asked the current James Madison coach why he would come to UCLA over other potential high-profile offers.
Chesney told Myers of his desire to raise his family in Los Angeles – his two daughters, Lyla and Hudson, and son, Bo, sitting in the front row Tuesday, by his wife, Andrea and father Robert “Bob Sr.” Chesney Sr. – and that the university wasn’t just on the table.
Chesney viewed what UCLA offered his family, the athlete, and the general student. He wanted UCLA.
“UCLA, although has had all these national championships, we have struggled in the football arena,” said Myers, who said UCLA would be in the top-third or quarter of resources in the Big Ten going forward. “Leadership is, I believe, the best way to transform a program, and I think we found a leader in Bob.”
Chesney knows there are challenges ahead. He’s never coached or recruited on the West Coast, though his mentions of open practices and free clinics are certainly ways to endear himself and UCLA to the Southern California community.
Now on his fifth stop on his head-coaching journey, and having started his path making $5,000 as an assistant at Norwich University, a military school in Vermont, Chesney emphasized two traits that he believes made him successful along the way: listening and empathy.
But Chesney knows one thing for certain: He sees where he wants to take UCLA, somewhere it’s arguably never been before.
“We don’t want to be the other school in this town,” said Chesney, whose contract was revealed at five years and $33.75 million on Tuesday. “We need to be the school in this town, and I promise you that will happen very soon.”
