By now, many here are probably beginning to sense that Ucla doesn't belong in college football anymore, and you're seeing them prove it every day.
Frenk's refusal, for now, to fire the AD who disemboweled the team to clear a path for a new FOOTBALL-oriented AD is your latest signal of Ucla's institutional mental illness and their mental unfitness for the task at hand in 2025.
Frenk's dithering signals mental illness since it repeats Jarmond's error in dealing with Chip in December 2023 (Jarmond was on a long vacation after the Gronk Bowl).
The repetition of this catastrophic error serves to normalize the commission of blatant errors as an acceptible behavioral norm under Frenk's new regime. Any hope for cultural change at Ucla is for now dashed.
Even as this obvious mistake makes Ucla's unsuitability undeniable to those outside the Ucla bubble, those within it just breathed a sigh of relief. The insanity that shields them, their salaries, benefits and pensions from reality will continue! Three cheers for Frenk!
We outside the bubble and who suffer from and pay for its existence can now easily see that Ucla itself is the cause of the Bruins' failure in football. (As predicted.)
Frenk, by proving he prefers bureaucracy and Ucla's dysfunctional norms to football success and the financial rewards that brings, is continuing the poisoned legacy of his several predecessors since Chancellor Young. He should be regarded as Jarmond's twin.
With Frenk's collapse, Ucla's administration now certainly represents a giant career risk for any talented, in-demand coach that the coach search committee may contact.
Case in point: Troy Aikman has apparently separated from the program he was vocally supporting. He too now has career risk from being associated with Ucla.
Therefore, the money Frenk thinks he may be saving by dithering and not now negotiating Jarmond's buyout will be spent later many times over to insure the new coach against the career risk that Ucla now plainly represents.
Ucla administration has turned the football job into a coaching risk. The top prospects will not return the committee's calls. The second tier will demand top-tier money and that's where we'll settle: a second-tier coach getting top-tier money. Can you see it now?
I hope by now, through their own actions, you can see that Ucla itself is the problem. I hope you can now see that we need to move the program away from Ucla's adminstration by whatever means are available.
At this point, a wholly-owned, independent subsidiary approach featuring independent management by a strong FOOTBALL-oriented AD and a strong football GM is the best we can hope for.
This is a common structure in the real world, but since Ucla doesn't operate in the real world we can't reasonably expect this improvement to happen here. Ucla's mental illness would find it too threatening.
The Oregon Model would be better still, but at this point I doubt any corporate sponsor would step into the mess at Ucla.