LOS ANGELES — Khary Darlington and the UCLA football recruiting staff had a whirlwind last few months.
Commits dropped like flies as the university fired head coach DeShaun Foster – a fairly expected occurrence after a coaching change – after a 0-3 start and the Bruins’ recruiting rankings plummeted across all college football recruitment sites.
“There’s been tears on both ends of the phone call,” said Darlington, the program’s general manager. “There’s been sleepless nights.”
Recruiting was a bright spot under Foster, with a top-25 class before his departure. It was up to Darlington and Co. – including assistant general manager Steven Price and senior director of recruiting operations Marshawn Friloux – to salvage the 2026 class.
On Wednesday, UCLA football announced the signings of 12 players as of 3:30 p.m., bringing a group of Bruins into Westwood who will be coached by the yet-to-be-officially announced incoming head coach, James Madison’s Bob Chesney.
Darlington, admittedly tired as signing day wound down to a close, said he wanted to be respectful of the next coach’s approach and talent evaluation, declining to discuss the talent profiles of the likes of three-star signees Kenneth Moore III, a wide receiver from St. Mary’s High in Stockton, and Logan Hirou, a safety from Santa Margarita High.
“It’s been a long season with everything that’s gone on,” Darlington said, “so just the mere fact that we were able to land the amount of players that we have landed, have our staff be as motivated as they were throughout the entire process and finish strong the way that we did, is encouraging.”
UCLA did lose three four-star recruits. Defensive lineman Carter Gooden and offensive lineman Micah Smith flipped to Tennessee and Illinois, respectively. On Tuesday, the Bruins also lost safety Toray Davis, who is now headed to Texas.
Offensive lineman commit Travis Robertson – a three-star from West Bloomfield in Michigan – flipped back to Bowling Green and signed with the Falcons on Wednesday.
‘We had our fingers crossed for a couple of players, hoping that we could keep them committed,” Darlington said. “It still felt good to know that the people you may have lost, you lost to legitimate competitors that did have the things that those individuals were looking for in some of those previous conversations.”
Mater Dei High safety CJ Lavender Jr. – who announced he’ll enroll early in January – said at his signing day event that it was the relationships with Darlington and Friloux that swayed his commitment to Westwood. Darlington said five or six signees will enroll early.
Offensive lineman Cooper Javorsky of San Juan Hills High has been one of the more vocal commits of the Bruins since recommitting to UCLA on Nov. 24. He decommitted in September before being wooed over by UCLA’s recruitment staff.
“I’ve been to all the home games this season and the entire recruiting staff never stopped making it clear they wanted me there,” Javorsky told Orange County Register’s Dan Albano. “That means a lot to me. I wanted a place where I felt at home.”
Two of the Bruins’ commits, four-star edge rusher Anthony Jones of Crean Lutheran High and three-star defensive lineman David Schwerzel of O’Dea High in Seattle – who flipped Tuesday from Stanford back to UCLA, where he was once committed – decided to delay their respective signing days.
Schwerzel removed all references to UCLA from his social media and said his decision not to sign with a university was due to “unforeseen circumstances.”
Darlington said that UCLA was “still waiting on a few more (recruits) to jump in” its national early signing day class and that the Bruins’ rounded-out class remains in the works.
“We’re ironing out those last few wrinkles now, but we’re expecting to have a few more people jump in,” he said.
