Another coach has wandered into Westwood saying he’ll awaken the Sleeping Giant.
Bob Chesney has a welcoming demeanor. He articulates his thoughts well. And if the people who hired him are right, the small-school wonder will be a transformative figure in Los Angeles sports.
Officially introduced on Tuesday as UCLA’s new football coach, the 48-year-old Chesney has a new-age vibe about him. His opening remarks lasted about seven minutes and he answered questions for nearly 30 more, but that wasn’t enough to tell whether he’ll be another Sean McVay or another Brandon Staley.
Here’s the more important question: Does it matter?
The Sleeping Giant of a football program has been hibernating for so long that no one can be certain it’s still hibernating.
The Sleeping Giant could be a Dead Giant.
Bob Toledo couldn’t build a consistent winner at UCLA. Rick Neuheisel, Jim Mora and Chip Kelly couldn’t either.
None of them were able to build a nationally relevant program by leveraging UCLA’s numerous advantages — the high-profile conferences in which its teams competed, the second-largest media market in the country, the school’s academic reputation, the Southern California weather.
At some point, it’s only natural to wonder if the problem was the school or its strict admission standards rather than the coaches.
Chesney obviously doesn’t think so, and he’s now the leader of a broader mission to prove that football can matter at UCLA.
“It’s not up for debate — if we will [win] or we will not — we will,” he said.
Chesney said that when he was being courted by UCLA, he was struck by how much the members of the six-person search committee believed the Bruins could be winners.
“There is zero chance that they’re going to allow us to fail,” Chesney said.
An example: Chesney will have the wherewithal to build a significantly more expensive coaching staff than his predecessors.
Sports executive Bob Myers, who was on the search committee, recalled how at one stage Chesney asked about the financial resources that would be made available to the program.
UCLA will be in the top third in the Big Ten, perhaps even the top quartile, Chensey was told. Chesney himself will be paid an average of $6.75 million a year.
Myers credited the investment in football to chancellor Julio Frenk.
“Leadership,” Myers said, “is usually the reason why something succeeds or fails.”
Myers is familiar with success. He was a reserve on UCLA’s national champion basketball team in 1994-95. He spent nearly two decades as an agent, after which he became a celebrated general manager of the Golden State Warriors dynasty.
Myers said he’s noticed a cultural shift at UCLA in the wake of Frenk’s arrival earlier this year.
“When I was at UCLA, we were fantastic in basketball,” Myers said. “Obviously, this has always been a fantastic academic institution, but I think we were a little apologetic about our sports. We didn’t want to push our sports into the forefront. We hesitated to celebrate the power of athletics.”
Frenk doesn’t have any such reservations, according to Myers.
Frenk opened the news conference by speaking of the importance of athletics, saying, “Athletics lift up our shared values, such as inclusion, fair play and teamwork, and athletics are the front porch of the university, one of the most visible symbols of what we stand for.”
The increased emphasis on athletics was necessary in Myers’ view.
“I think to succeed in anything, you have to be unapologetic and say, no, the football team matters to a high degree,” Myers said.
Myers acknowledged the possibility that UCLA was forced into this mentality by its move to the Big Ten. To compete in such a competitive conference, he said, “you have to embrace the power of football.”
Myers pointed to Indiana as an example of what a more ambitious mindset could do for a program. The No. 1 team in the country, Indiana is in its second season under Curt Cignetti, who like Chesney coached at James Madison.
“You look at a place like Indiana, traditional basketball school,” Myers said. “It’s a great model where you might have asked that question, ‘Why isn’t Indiana football …?’ They hadn’t beaten, what, Ohio State in 30 years? If you were a student there or been around there, alumni, you’d say, ‘Well, we can’t beat these teams.’ Well, they just did. So I believe UCLA has got as good or better chance than a place like that.”
So the Bruins are back to this familiar place, once again believing they could win football games, once again placing their faith in a coach who isn’t like the coaches who came before him.
Only this time, they are giving the coach more than a small stick to poke the Sleeping Giant. They have armed him with a metal bat and a couple of sirens.
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