UCLA’s decision to blow up its Pac-12 life and chase the Big-10 payday was supposed to solve problems. Instead, the move has helped create one mess after another, and now the school has fired the man who helped steer it there.
On Monday, UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk dismissed athletic director Martin Jarmond after six years of deficits that climbed past $200 million. Frenk then brought in UCLA men’s soccer alum and former Los Angeles Lakers executive Tim Harris to lead the department.
The financial picture is ugly. Over the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years, UCLA athletics spent $73.48 million more than it took in.
That figure is bad enough on its own, but the department’s listed income also includes $52.5 million in direct university support and student fees. Put together, UCLA’s campus contribution to athletics for those two years topped $125 million.
Jarmond and UCLA clearly believed the Big-10’s television money would be the cure-all. The reality has been harsher.
The conference may pay more, but it also costs more to keep up. UCLA has had to spend more to try to compete in its new league, still spent less than most of its peers, and has gone 6-12 in Big-10 play over two seasons.
Frenk’s public message points to a future built on revenue generation, not endless subsidy. In his statement, he said:
Now is the moment to build a model for Athletics that protects the breadth of our program, creates new opportunities for student-athletes and coaches, and supports itself through the revenue it generates.
That sounds tidy on paper. It may even be politically useful.
But if UCLA is banking on simply getting more people into the Rose Bowl for games like UCLA vs. Michigan State, that’s not a clean fix for a structural money problem.
And that’s the real issue here: getting rid of Jarmond does not erase the deficit. UCLA’s problems go deeper than one administrator. The only way out is cash, and a lot of it.
There’s also the uncomfortable comparison UCLA has always had to live with. The school has long defined itself against USC, casting itself as the cleaner, less mercenary option.
USC, for all its flaws, knows exactly what it is. It is the villain.
It owns that role. UCLA, by contrast, sold out the Pac-12, aligned itself with USC and the Big-10, and still finished 13th in an 18-team conference.
That leaves UCLA looking like USC without the money, USC without the wins, USC without the aura, and USC with fewer paying fans. UCLA is dollar store USC. UCLA is Dark Helmet trying to go Ludicrous Speed into the Big-10, and it is not working.
Cal could still lose to that team on Saturday. Bob Chesney is a more than competent coach, and it would not be a shock if his group of experienced James Madison players is better prepared than Tosh Lupoi’s more varied transfer portal additions.
But even a UCLA win would not change the larger reality. For UCLA fans who saw the Big-10 jump as a mistake from the start, this is exactly the kind of fallout they feared. For the ones who bought the pitch and pretended the school was college sports’ special case because of its market and USC’s choices, the bill is here.
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