LOS ANGELES — After a 0-3 start and back-to-back losses to Mountain West programs, UCLA fired DeShaun Foster as its football coach, UCLA Athletics announced on Sunday morning.
Tim Skipper, who served as the special assistant to the head football coach, will take over as interim head coach for the duration of the season. Skipper served as Fresno State’s interim head coach a year ago.
“I want to extend my sincere appreciation to DeShaun for his contributions to UCLA Football over the course of many years, first as a Hall of Fame student-athlete, then as an assistant coach and finally as head coach,” UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond said in a release. “He was named to this role at a challenging time of year, on the cusp of a move to a new conference, and he embraced it, putting his heart into moving the program forward.”
Foster, the former UCLA running back and longtime running backs coach, took over the program in February 2024 after previous head coach Chip Kelly departed to become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State.
Foster, who was hired following a vigorous internal campaign by then-current students, concludes his tenure at the helm of the football program with a 5-10 record.
“Serving as the head coach at UCLA, my beloved alma mater, has been the honor of a lifetime,” Foster said in a release. “While I am deeply disappointed that we were unable to achieve the success that our players, fans, and university deserve, I am grateful for the opportunity to have led this program.”
UCLA’s start to the 2025 season was unprecedented. Through three games, the Bruins posted a negative-65 point differential, the worst statistical start to a season since 1943, when the program recorded an even-worse negative-73 point differential.
Winless starts aren’t uncommon in Westwood; Kelly led UCLA to 0-3 launch points in 2018 and 2019.
However, in those seasons, losses included programs such as Oklahoma and Cincinnati — more formidable, and understandable than losses to the likes of UNLV and New Mexico, programs that celebrated once-in-a-decade level victories over the Bruins.
And although UCLA’s recruiting picked up — boasting the No. 24 and No. 12 ranked recruiting classes in 2026 and 2027, according to 247Sports — the Bruins’ results never bubbled up to the surface in 2025.
Foster flexed the program’s name, image and likeness clout to grab transfer quarterback Nico Iamaleava from Tennessee — after a controversial transfer saga which led the former No. 1 overall recruit (according to On3) to Westwood.
Iamaleava, alongside offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri — whom Foster hired from Indiana, where he served as co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, to replace Eric Bieniemy after the 2024 season — failed to build offensive momentum from the get-go. UCLA’s offense ranks 127th in the country (14.3 points per game), and was outscored 30-0 in the first quarter across the first three games of the season.
The lopsidedness of UCLA’s efforts — most recently falling 35-10 to New Mexico on Friday — only highlighted the Bruins’ defensive struggles all around. The unit, led by second-year defensive coordinator Ikaika Malloe, failed to record a tackle for loss or a sack on Friday — ranking near the bottom of the nation in both categories.
UCLA was due to pay Foster $3.1 million for the entirety of the second year of his contract, which was originally set to pay him $15.4 million, before bonuses, across five seasons.
Foster’s buyout terms will see UCLA pay him 70% of the remainder of his 2025 salary (likely a little below $2.17 million), 60% of his 2026 salary ($1.92 million) and 50% of his 2027 and 2028 salaries ($1.65 million and $1.7 million), which would be slightly above $7 million altogether.
UCLA will now go back to the drawing board — with nine games left in the season, all of which are in Big Ten play — and also begin the search for who will next lead the Bruins’ football program.
More to come on this story.
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