Sports are, at a fundamental level, entertainment. Sports are not war, though some coaches think so with their paranoid and secretive practices. They are not physical education, though some members of the media occasionally denigrate coaches as glorified PE teachers. Sports are entertainment. The main reason professional or professionalized sports exist in the modern era is because people are interested in watching them. There are no professional sports without fans. There are no massive coaching salaries, NIL warchests, TV contracts, or stadiums without them. To paraphrase the great Dan Hawkins, that would be intramurals [brother].

In other words, you, the reader, are the most important part of this thing. In aggregate, at any rate. Where you put your eyeballs and dollars is far more important, in the macro, than where a defensive lineman puts his hands.

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And so it is that embracing sports as entertainment is an important part of building a functional college sports program in the modern era. A few programs nationally have a real chance at winning a national title in a given year. UCLA is not one of those programs, at least not at this point. But all programs require money, and all money for these programs flows, at one level or another, from fans.

Fandom, meanwhile, is about hope, and stoking that hope on a constant, year-long basis is part of the fundamental task for a modern college football program. Whether or not you realistically think your team is going to win a national title, you want to have a little hope that, hey, we might surprise some people this year. As a program, you need to get people bought in so they continue to buy season tickets, show up to games, donate, and also just maintain a baseline interest level. You need to make people believe you have a real chance to make a move, and that at some point not too distant in the future, there will be a real accomplishment.

(Photo: Isabella Serafini/UCLA Athletics)

Many programs understand this, and have understood this over the years. They leak information about recruiting to get fans excited about potential prospects who could arrive on campus the next year. They open up spring football to give fans, especially younger ones, an opportunity to watch the team and meet some players. They even open up the first couple of weeks of fall camp for the same reason. They make player and coach interviews easy, because if you’ve recruited and hired well, they understand that those interviews will make the program look better, and provide one more hook to keep fans engaged. 

None of that will make up for a losing program, of course. The main way to get fans and keep them engaged is to win. But to say that the only thing that matters is winning is a reductive and frankly just kind of wooden-headed way of thinking about things. To win at the level where you can eschew all other marketing is to win at the level of Nick Saban at Alabama. To make it so that people keep coming back to a 6-6/7-5 program is to 1) give them some hope that greater is possible through messaging and recruiting and 2) connect them to the program by letting them know the players and personalities surrounding the program.

UCLA has largely failed to do this over the last decade. The program has hemorrhaged season ticket holders, and attendance has dropped in a commensurate way. While the fans on BRO are as passionate and engaged as ever, many of the more garden variety fans have simply found other things to do on their Saturdays in the fall.

Ten days from now, UCLA will kick off the second season of the DeShaun Foster era against Utah, and the second season of UCLA’s time in the Big Ten. Foster has operated the program in a more secretive way this year, eschewing access for fans and media in favor of an insular, team-centered approach that has not allowed for much actual information about this team to come out. As Foster himself said during his media availability this week, “I’m not worried about the marketing because what marketing does, if you win games, you’re marketed. So we’re going to go out there and focus on winning games.” The onus then falls on Foster to win – and win at such a level that it puts butts back in seats, marketing and access be damned.

Can UCLA do it? As always, we’re previewing the team according to several factors, namely Talent, Experience, Coaching, Injuries, and the Schedule.