On3's 'Andy & Ari' podcast takes note of UCLA football revival
The buzz created by the recruiting efforts of UCLA head coach Bob Chesney and the staff reached a national audience Tuesday.
Andy Staples and Ari Wasserman, the On3 college football reporting tandem who also host the “Andy & Ari” podcast on the network, dedicated 12 minutes of their latest episode to chime in on the Bruins’ surge up the 2027 Rivals rankings that briefly landed the program in the top 10 this past weekend. UCLA currently sits at No. 11 in the rankings.
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“Ari, this is not the thing I thought we’d be talking about if you’d asked me eight months ago, nine months ago,” Staples started at the 51:58 mark of the 70-minute episode. “But we gotta talk about UCLA surging in high school recruiting in the class of 2027.
“Bob Chesney is hitting the ground running at UCLA. … Bob Chesney is not playing around.”
Half of the Bruins’ 16 commitments are blue-chip prospects — all four-star recruits — and Wasserman noted that cornerback JuJu Johnson, the top-rated pledge, “is the beginning groundwork of some pretty exciting stuff.”
Wasserman added that he recently connected with a pair of elderly UCLA season-ticket holders from Pasadena.
“They said that the vibe around the fans and the program has completely altered, shifted to the positive,” Wasserman shared. “Want to know why? Because this stuff is possible now.
“I know that they have some disadvantages, right? Their stadium is not on campus, it’s an academic-first place, all these different things. But, buddy, if I were a five-star prospect, I’d like to take a visit to UCLA.”
In comparison, Staples quickly highlighted crosstown rival USC, which signed the top-ranked 2026 high school class after shifting its recruiting model under general manager Chad Bowden. Staples said Chesney and UCLA have made its vision clear from Day 1.
“It is possible,” Staples said.
Earlier this week, Wasserman also tabbed USC and head coach Lincoln Riley as the top program on his list of schools facing the most pivotal upcoming seasons and that anything short of making a College Football Playoff run would be considered a failure. The Trojans have yet to qualify for the CFP in Riley’s first four seasons.
Wasserman reflected on a time when UCLA football was once “one of the scary teams in the Pac-12.” Now in the Big Ten, he highlighted “a different set of challenges” with an uptick in competition.
“They’re now in a much more competitive conference, top to bottom,” Wasserman said. “But, man, I could think of worse places to play college football than (UCLA).”
Andy & Ari podcast segment
Watch the full clip, and the rest of the episode, below for more of their thoughts on the Bruins, a comparison to Indiana, and more, near the end of the show: