UCLA Football Recruiting: National Signing Day 2019 Post-Mortem

Why didn’t it work in 2019?

First things first: you could call UCLA’s 2019 recruiting approach more than a tad arrogant. Inherent in the way it chose to pursue its class were assumptions that recruits would be attracted by exclusivity for exclusivity’s sake (a.k.a. the infamous Golden Tickets), the appeal of playing for a coach with Chip Kelly’s reputation for up-tempo excitement, and the style and development that would be seen on the field for UCLA this season.

The pain of suffering through a 3-9 season undid a lot of Chip Kelly’s existing buzz and UCLA self-imposed more hurdles by failing to lay enough of a foundation in terms of its personal connection with desired recruits to overcome changes in the expected narrative of its inaugural season under Chip Kelly.

Let’s be clear though: UCLA is not totally doomed by any means. Washington, TCU, Michigan State and a few others have built their programs off establishing a culture of ruggedness and development first and the players followed once the results showed on the field, so it proves what UCLA is building by emphasizing player development first can and should work. And there truly is very little wrong with the evaluation process in place. It’s mind-boggling, in fact, that other schools aren’t as thorough and recruit by essentially outsourcing scouting to the online analysts.

Nonetheless, there were clear missteps in the 2019 recruiting class that UCLA is going to need to be self-aware of and rectify quickly. The proof is in the pudding and the results show that UCLA failed to land the vast majority of its self-identified top targets in the 2019 class, and that’s probably most attributable to this staff committing the cardinal sin in recruiting: ignoring the humanity of it.

Chip Kelly himself said during his Early Signing Day press conference that he expected to bring in at least six more recruits in the Late Signing Period, so for UCLA to only bring in three, including going 0-for-5 on Late Signing Day and bringing in only one linebacker overall who garnered any non-UCLA Power Five offers, should be raising alarms in the Wasserman Center if the general trend of UCLA’s 2019 recruiting hadn’t already become readily apparent.