Martin Jarmond is not a particularly popular figure these days.
Some fans frustrated by UCLA’s winless football team are expected to wear “Fire Jarmond” shirts in blue and gold to Saturday’s game at the Rose Bowl against Penn State. One group has organized an airplane banner to fly over the stadium before the game, with a similar message directed at the beleaguered Bruins athletic director.
The list of grievances is a lengthy one, leading a group of nearly a dozen high-level donors to reach out to The Times about what they allege is a pattern of rampant dysfunction inside the athletic department that goes well beyond the surprise hiring and speedy dismissal of football coach DeShaun Foster on Sept. 14 after only 15 games.
Among other things, the donors also questioned Jarmond’s name, image and likeness strategy, high spending despite years of running up massive athletic department deficits and failure to fire coach Chip Kelly amid subpar results.
“What’s happening now feels like watching a trainwreck in slow motion,” said Scott Tretsky, a donor and season ticket-holder for more than two decades. “What we’re seeing isn’t just a rough patch. It’s institutional apathy. And if the administration doesn’t care, why should fans and recruits?
“This isn’t a casual fan speaking. I rarely miss a game. I’ve invested time, money, and emotion for decades, and right now, it feels like the people running the show don’t share that same investment. This program could thrive. It has the history, the fan base, the resources. But it needs leadership with courage and a real plan. Right now, we have neither.”
One misstep made a donor question whether operations inside Jarmond’s athletic department were even worse than they appeared on a surface level.
Ten days before a group of donors departed for a trip to watch UCLA’s football team play Utah in 2023, an email outlining the itinerary was sent with an unexpected attachment — a database revealing personal information and spending habits of the athletic department’s biggest supporters.
Included in the spreadsheet sent to several dozen donors was the home address, email address and phone numbers of Bruins football legend Troy Aikman. Separate columns included the lifetime giving and annual Wooden Athletic Fund contributions of more than 200 top donors such as sports executive Casey Wasserman, ice cream magnate Justin Woolverton and philanthropist Wallis Annenberg, with each donor assigned a priority number based on their level of generosity.
The donor, who did not want to his name published because of the sensitivity of the data in the spreadsheet, told The Times he spoke with others who were equally incredulous about receiving such revealing information in the email from an associate athletic director for fundraising who is no longer employed by UCLA.
There was no apology or further communication besides a follow-up email from the associate athletic director sent 26 minutes after the first one, simply recalling the message. A UCLA athletic department spokesperson declined to comment about the incident other than to say the employee involved in the unauthorized distribution of information and his direct supervisor no longer worked for the university.
“I would assume with something like this where they knew what happened, they should just do something like say, ‘I’m so sorry, this was an internal working file, we’re doing everything we can’ to rectify it. Just something,” the donor who received the information said. “If I wanted to pitch something to Troy Aikman, I have the information to do it with.”
Soon after Jarmond and another athletic department staffer were informed that The Times was writing about Jarmond’s stewardship of the athletic department, five donors called to speak on Jarmond’s behalf. They cited financial constraints that prevented the athletic director from firing Kelly, Foster’s hiring as his attempt to make the best of a bad situation and a belief that Jarmond could help raise the resources needed to hire a far more successful replacement.
Other donors have already decided they are giving up on big giving.
As a result of his unhappiness with the way the athletic department is being run, one donor who was close to joining the 1919 Society that recognizes those who have given at least $1 million said he had abandoned that endeavor.
Part of his dissatisfaction is rooted in a dinner conversation with Jarmond at a Tucson steakhouse before UCLA played Arizona in October 2021. Asked to share his favorite UCLA sports moment, the donor said it was the football team’s having won three Rose Bowls and a Fiesta Bowl while he was a student in the early to mid-1980s.
According to the donor and two others at the table, Jarmond called the donor’s expectations unrealistic and said that historically, UCLA had won an average of seven to eight games a year, suggesting those should be the expectations going forward.
Asked about the exchange, Jarmond said that “without getting into specifics of my conversations with any one individual, my intended message whenever this subject arises is that dynasties in college football are increasingly rare. In today’s environment, with the implementation of revenue-sharing, NIL and the transfer portal, it’s harder than ever to sustain success at the highest level. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the goal. Competing for championships is and always has been core to our mission.”
Several donors questioned the commitment to NIL within Jarmond’s athletic department.
After one donor made a second large NIL contribution, he said, he was chided by one high-ranking athletics official who told him that his money would have been better spent going to the Wooden Athletic Fund that supports the entire department. Donors have criticized Jarmond for not getting Kelly to do more work to support the football team’s NIL efforts, leading to the team lagging far behind its conference counterparts, and was also slow to publicly recognize and support Men of Westwood, the collective spearheading UCLA’s NIL endeavors.
Several donors said UCLA has misunderstood NIL from the start, using small initiatives such as Westwood Exchange as a substitute for helping the Bruins stay more competitive with other schools that understood that pay-for-play was an accepted practice. Once revenue sharing started this summer, allowing the school to pay athletes directly, UCLA further de-emphasized the importance of having a robust NIL program even though it’s widely believed that the new model will eventually resemble the old one.
Jarmond pointed to UCLA’s partnering with NIL agency Article 41 to enhance athletes’ personal brands and social media presence as evidence of the school’s commitment to being on the forefront of the NIL space.
“We’re gonna provide whoever the next [football] coach is with the resources and a financial investment that we haven’t done before, quite frankly,” Jarmond said.
UCLA teams have won six NCAA championships under Jarmond’s watch and posted more conference titles last season than any other Big Ten team. The move to the Big Ten is also expected to provide additional revenue to help stabilize the athletic department’s finances, which required a university bailout and drew a sharp rebuke from the executive board of the school’s academic senate after running $219.55 million in the red over the last six fiscal years.
Jim Bendat, a men’s basketball season ticket-holder and longtime fan, said the athletic director faced some unique challenges that constrained his success with the football program.
“I have some sympathy for Jarmond,” Bendat said. “Money had to be an issue when he arguably should have fired Kelly immediately after the ‘23 season. Then the timing of Kelly’s departure put Jarmond in a nearly impossible situation. Basketball, baseball, softball and Olympic sports are doing fine. Is it fair to give credit for those successes only to the coaches and players, but blame only Jarmond for football failures? I don’t think that’s fair at all.
“Because football is the cash cow, that’s the big focus. I say give this AD another chance to get this right. It will be the biggest hire he will ever make, and he has to get it right this time.”
Criticisms of Jarmond, however, are growing louder and have been brewing for years.
Past concerns have involved a lack of communication when UCLA abruptly pulled out of the 2021 Holiday Bowl over COVID-19 concerns only a few hours before the scheduled kickoff. North Carolina State coach Dave Doeren blasted the Bruins for a lack of transparency about their roster situation that prevented the Wolfpack from having a backup plan, saying, “We felt lied to, to be honest.”
Jarmond said he was prioritizing the health and safety of the players and the Bruins had every intention of playing had they been able to do so responsibly.
Only a month later, Jarmond faced backlash for being slow to wade into a controversy involving a racial slur used by a member of the women’s gymnastics team. Jarmond met with the team only after Margzetta Frazier and Norah Flatley tweeted to request his help, and Frazier later described a statement that Jarmond released about the situation as “discouraging” based on the athletic department’s response to the scandal being “performative.”
Perhaps Jarmond’s biggest challenge has been an underperforming football team that’s drawn record-low crowds at the Rose Bowl.
Foster’s quick flameout after a little more than one season has led to a new opening inside the athletic department while leading a growing contingent of donors and fans to demand one more. A petition to have Jarmond resign or be removed has collected more than 1,400 signatures and a mobile billboard truck circulated Westwood last week with messages such as “UCLA Football Deserves Better Fire AD Martin Jarmond” and “$7 Million Buyout for UCLA’s AD? Failure Never Paid So Well.”
According to the terms of the contract extension he signed in May 2024 — at a time when UCLA was transitioning from outgoing chancellor Gene Block to successor Julio Frenk — Jarmond, 45, would be owed roughly $7.1 million, or the full amount of his remaining contract that runs through June 30, 2029, if he was terminated without cause.
“No single person has done more to damage the legacy and potential of UCLA football than Martin Jarmond,” said Ryan Bernard, one of the organizers of the mobile billboard truck. “From his inability to fire Chip Kelly to his unjustifiable, lazy hire of a recently departed running backs coach as head coach, Jarmond’s performance has been abysmal.”
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