UCLA has picked its 2026 football captains, and the vote from the locker room landed on two familiar names at the top of the depth chart: quarterback Nico Iamaleava on offense and linebacker Sammy Omosigho on defense.
The Bruins said both players were chosen by their teammates to serve as permanent captains for the season. UCLA also noted that two additional game captains will join them each week.
The timing matters, too. The announcement comes just days before UCLA opens the season Saturday in Berkeley against California, and it will be Bob Chesney’s first game as the Bruins’ head coach.
Iamaleava is set to guide the UCLA offense again in his second year with the program. He arrived from Tennessee before last season and took over as QB1 during a difficult 3-9 campaign. Even in that stretch, he finished 14th in the Big Ten with 1,928 passing yards and eighth in pass completion percentage at 64.4%.
Now he moves into the season with Dean Kennedy running the offense. Kennedy came over after leading James Madison to the 15th-best total offense in the country last year at 452.6 yards per game.
Omosigho is entering his first season in Westwood after spending the previous three at Oklahoma. In 2025, he finished fifth on the team with 50 total tackles and also posted 4.5 tackles for loss and 2.0 sacks.
He’ll be working under Colin Hitschler, another coordinator with James Madison ties. Hitschler helped JMU produce the fifth-best total defense in the nation last season, allowing 266.8 yards per game.
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