Kent Bewley

The UCLA Bruins athletics department has reportedly hired James Madison University coach Bob Chesney to be the new head coach of the school’s football program this past Monday. According to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Chesney signed a five-year deal with an undisclosed financial amount with the Bruins after his current team’s regular season concluded on Sat, Nov 29.  

However, the Bruins allowed Chesney, 48, to continue coaching the JMU Dukes football team at least through the Sun Belt conference championship game on Fri, Dec 5 in Harrisonburg, Va. The Dukes hosted the Troy Trojans and won the game 31-14. After results from Saturday’s slate of conference championship games, James Madison(12-1) was selected as the final highest-ranked conference champion in the College Football Playoff field and will play in the First Round of the tournament against the fifth-ranked Oregon Ducks on Sat, Dec 20 at 7:30 p.m. EST/4:30 p.m PST.

According to Liza David, Sports Information Director at UCLA, a press release on Sat, Dec 6 by the school’s athletics department stated that “Chesney will be introduced at a press conference on-campus on Tue, Dec 9”.

UCLA turned towards hiring a new head coach after a tough season that included the dismissal of former head coach DeShaun Foster, who was fired on Sat, Sep 13 after only coaching 15 games over two seasons. Foster was replaced in the interim by assistant coach Tim Skipper, who coached the Bruins to a 3-9 overall record in 2025. The board of directors at UCLA conducted a long nationwide search of potential coaching candidates and geared their focus towards Chesney, who has coached James Madison to a solid record of 21-5 in two seasons at the helm and also coached an FCS program at Holy Cross from 2018 to 2023.  

The UCLA press release stated that Athletic Director Martin Jarmond said that Chesney “impressed our search committee every step of the way”, describing his detailed-oriented approach to running a program and his ability to connect with players as positive attributes.  

The Bruins’ hiring of Chesney brings a vibrant and experienced head coach to a program that has gone through two mediocre seasons in a row since their realignment into the Big Ten conference. However, with his official arrival to Westwood occurring weeks later than a few programs who hired their coaches and introduced them during the first week of December, Chesney will have a lot of work to delve into as the transfer portal for players on FBS-sponsored programs opens up on Thur, Jan 2.

UCLA will find itself a couple of weeks behind mostly everyone else in recruiting prospects out of high school and potential transferring student-athletes now because Chesney will continue coaching the JMU team until they are eliminated from the College Football Playoff. This situation will be a difficult challenge for Chesney, Jarmond and the entire athletics department to overcome early on

The decision to hire Chesney will hopefully bode well for UCLA and the whole Bruins community as a whole for the near future competing in one of the toughest conferences in all of college football. As Chesney himself said in the press release officially announcing his hiring, “Leadership is ready. The alumni are ready. The fanbase is ready. And I am ready. I look forward to working together as we bring this program to the standard of excellence it deserves.”