You know, DeShaun Foster predicted this.
He told us the Bruins would again have the Rose Bowl rocking like it was 1998, back when he was the star running back.
“People used to love coming to the Rose Bowl games, filling the stadium,” Foster said in February 2024, when he was hired to be UCLA’s head coach. “We’re gonna get back to that.”
But it wasn’t he who fostered the resurgence. It just took UCLA living through that failed Foster experiment to get here — not just competent, not only relevant, but elite. One of the best teams in the nation.
It took the Bruins hitting rock bottom last season — when they went 3-9 — to go out and find Bob Chesney to be their head football coach.
And now they can never let Chesney go. Through sickness and health, rain or shine, this is their guy.
The Bruins haven’t had this kind of shine — they’re 10-0 after Friday’s gritty 22-14 victory over a surging Illinois team — since 1998, when they also started the season 10-0.
Chesney has spurred the greatest turnaround in program history, improving by seven wins.
He’s got his team ranked fourth in College Football Playoff polling. One more victory — the Bruins’ next game is on the road against a meh Michigan team that’s 2-4 in Big Ten play — and they’ll set the UCLA record for wins in a season.
And yes, according to a person with knowledge of the situation not authorized to speak publicly, the school and coach are optimistic that he’ll soon be finalizing a substantial contract extension at UCLA, where his Bruins have proved tough and resilient — and worth fans’ support.
They’re also deep, these Bruins, a collection of players who Chesney taught to believe in themselves.
“‘We’re not good enough.’ That’s what everybody has told us before we got here to this place,” said Aiden Gobaira, a senior defensive lineman who followed Chesney from James Madison and who came through with UCLA’s first safety since 2022 on Friday.
“We’re a team filled with guys who were told that we weren’t good enough. So it’s our job and our responsibility to prove that every day to ourselves — not really to anybody else, but to ourselves that we deserve to be here. We deserve to compete at the highest level.”
Now they’ve got fans believing too; he’s got Bruins supporters coming out of hibernation, reenergized football enthusiasts who showed up despite Friday traffic and stuck around despite a game-long downpour. The sudden success on the field and the success at the gate might not have aligned early this season, but on Friday, what Chesney built got them to come out; the Bruins drew a well-soaked, season-high crowd of 45,800.
“Shout out to the fans,” said standout senior linebacker Sammy Omosigho, who had a team-high seven tackles. “It was wonderful, it was loud, it was energetic. We really felt y’all, and let’s continue to do it every week.”
Shout out to Chesney, whose debut season feels like a movie. Real Hollywood fare, his football field of dreams.
His only fault might be that he believes too much. Take his decision to go for it with 4:24 in the third quarter on fourth and two with Madden Iamaleava, UCLA’s third-string quarterback. UCLA turned the ball over on downs, which gave Illinois the ball at its 46-yard line and set up the touchdown that cut the Bruins’ lead to 12-7.
But that wasn’t just Chesney’s faith in his defense, which has been elite all season and had, on Illinois’ previous two possessions, recorded the safety and one of three interceptions. It was how convicted he was about the call.
In retrospect: “A ridiculous decision,” Chesney said. “A very bad decision … we let them out of jail. It was not a good idea.”
But, he added, “we had a perfect play call, though! We knew what we were getting on the defense, and that’s the only reason why we felt like we could do it. We knew the exact look, we knew the exact scheme, and we knew that on sometimes those fourth and ones like that or fourth and twos, when they sell out, if it pops, it pops big. And that’s really what we were shooting for, and we missed a block.
“So in the end, I wasn’t trying to think about what could go wrong, I was thinking about what could go right.”
If that doesn’t sum up Chesney’s first 10 games at UCLA. Plenty has gone wrong and yet the Bruins keep getting it right.
Remember, they’re winning without starting quarterback Nico Iamaleava, out for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament. They’ve also been without injured receivers Mikey Matthews, Jonah Smith and Jalen Saint Paul.
On Friday they missed starting center Riley Robell, who was ill, and they lost quarterback Ty Dieffenbach, the Cal Poly transfer who’s been about as much of a revelation as Chesney, for a stretch after he limped off the field after a hit, with nagging ankle and a nervy elbow issues.
But still, nobody blinked, Chesney said: “They just believe that they have a shot to win every game and that they’re going to find a way.”
And, once cleared, Dieffenbach raced back out of the tunnel, returning an ovation from the big crowd. Then, with 55 seconds left in the third quarter, he promptly led UCLA on an eight-play, 75-yard scoring drive that he punctuated by lofting a 26-yard touchdown pass to a leaping, twisting Semaj Morgan.
And the Rose Bowl erupted. Just like Foster knew it could.
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