Transcript: UCLA general manager Khary Darlington on signing day
After UCLA finished announcing its 12 early-signees on social media Wednesday, general manager Khary Darlington addressed the media via Zoom in the afternoon.
BruinBlitz collaborated with the Los Angeles Times and Southern California News Group on the following transcript (questions are in BOLD):
Darlington: “Doing well – long day, long night.”
HOW MUCH SLEEP DID YOU GET?
Darlington: “Very little.” [Chuckles]
CAN YOU GIVE US AN OVERVIEW OF CLASS, SURPRISES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS?
Darlington: “I appreciate you leading off that way, I think the best approach for this call is to keep it at a bird’s-eye view — I want to be respectful of whoever the next head coach is coming in and allow him to set the tone for what his expectations are for the current class and let him be the first one to speak to what his vision is. As you guys know, it’s been a long season with everything that’s gone on, so just the mere fact that we were able to land the amount of players that we have landed, have our staff be as motivated as they were throughout the entire process and finish strong the way that we did is encouraging. As far as any surprises that we had, not really. You know, you always kind of walk into this thing holding your breath, knowing that nothing is guaranteed. What I’ve learned very quickly in this business in the collegiate space is that things could change at the drop of a dime, so we had our fingers crossed for a couple of players, hoping that we could keep them committed, but then with some of the previous conversations we had with the family and understanding everything that was involved this go-around in regards of what individual players and families were looking for to give themselves a sense of stability, it still felt good to know that the people you may have lost, you lost to legitimate competitors that did have the things that those individuals were looking for in some of those previous conversations. That being said, I think we have laid a good foundation for whoever will be coming in here next to build from, that was Steven and I’s plan from the beginning – Steven’s our assistant general manager – to be sure that we could accomplish what we consider to be raising the floor of our guys knowing how many roster spots that we still have available and still understanding to leave space for the new coach to have the players that he may want to have in here and still give them enough versatility or whatever options they want to approach for the portal moving forward.”
CHALLENGES OF RECRUITING WITH NO HEAD COACH FOR MOST OF REGULAR SEASON?
[Chuckles]
Darlington: “Recruiting is so much more than expensive dinners and phone calls. You know, you get to know a lot of these people and their families at a very like personal level, and so you come to care about everybody involved in a very short period of time and so having the conversations after the coaching change, I don’t know if I can clearly articulate how difficult some of these conversations were. I come from a background where we lead with people and humility and what we call like the human element of football and people are making decisions that will impact the rest of their lives if you’re talking about 17- and 18-year-old children and parents that come from a variety of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Making it to college means something different for everybody and so the difficulty is doing the right thing in every situation–not meaning like it’s difficult to do the right thing, but what’s right is always having honest straight down the line conversations knowing that you can’t promise certain things and being willing to lie about that stuff is difficult and then you — I say this without exaggeration, there’s been tears on both ends of the phone call, there’s been sleepless nights in between it because I think when something like this happens, people’s first response is, what does this mean for me? And when you speak to a parent, they’re talking to you about their child and their first instinct is to protect their child, know whose hands they’re going to place them in and so not being able to answer some of those questions straight down the line, I think our approach of honesty and giving them the space to explore whatever scenario that may be playing in their head went a very long way with us and just knowing that there’s a genuine exchange and still an opportunity to bet on yourself at a university like UCLA, I think those things worked well for us, but these are very hard and difficult conversations that lasted as late as 10:30 p.m. last night.”
KENNETH MOORE III HAS BEEN COMMITTED A LONG TIME, NEVER PUBLICLY WAVERED. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HIS COMMITMENT LEVEL TO THIS PROGRAM AND YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM AND WHAT HE’S LIKE AS A PLAYER?
Darlington: “I’ll talk about the person first, and what that what that process is like. Kenny’s a phenomenal, phenomenal kid, very intelligent, bright smile, but, but, but quiet and measured at the same time, right, like he has this blend of being personable, but you can still tell he’s taking in the entire room in early conversations, but then, like as you start to build these relationships, it’s a family affair, you know. So we got to know his mom very early on in the process as well. His dad is extremely active. There’s a group chat with myself, Steven Price and his dad, that anytime he had a question or had a concern or a thought, he would just drop it in the group chat. And if I happen to be too busy at the moment to get to him, Steven would would give the reply, and he and I are always in constant communication with each other. So he may tell me something in passing, to say, ‘hey, like, you know, check your phone, Kenny’s pops just just tapped in. He has a question about these things. ‘And vice versa. If you know, Steven’s busy doing something that he has to do, I’ll take the lead and reply. And you know, those conversations typically start off with, you know, what’s next? What are you guys thinking here? A couple highlight films, and then it evolves into jokes. And did you guys see this happening? And you know, you kind of go back there. So Kenny and his family is a perfect example of what I was talking about early on in regards of like you go from, ‘Hey how you doing? My name is so and so,’ to coming to grow and care about the well being of the prospect and the family. As a player, again, I, you know, respectfully, like to kind of leave that to the coach to talk about the role that he can play. But if you go back and you check his accolades and the stuff he’s accomplished this year, his performance speaks for itself.”
HOW MANY OF THESE ARE EARLY ENROLLMENTS, AND WHAT DID YOU LIKE ABOUT A PLAYER LIKE LOGAN HIROU?
Darlington: “Are we at what, five or six early enrollees? Yeah, I think we’re, I think we may have we’re at five or six early enrollees.
“And again, somebody like Logan, I have a saying that we teach all of our analysts, and it’s, it’s funny because, you know, you you get here in March, hand out the manual and do these things, and begin to start talking philosophy, and they start to pick up on some of your catchphrases. And a catchphrase that we always say that is, you can’t separate the person from the player. And so somebody like like Logan, another guy that would meet the profile of what we believe a Bruin is, and the type of player that we believe that can be successful on and off the field at a place like UCLA with a high academic standard, where the citizen is equally as important as the person on the field. But there’s a lot to like about about Logan as well. I’ll keep it to the intangible stuff, opposed to talking about production and fit, you know, like I said about before, but Logan was always a tough kid. Had good instincts. You never had to question his, you know, desire or motor to kind of get to the ball and be a part of whatever’s going on with the team, to to have success.”
TWO PARTER: WHAT WAS THE KEY FOR YOU AND YOUR STAFF TO CONVINCE PLAYERS THAT WERE PUBLICLY DECOMMITTED TO MAYBE NOT WAVER, AND WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT YOU AND YOUR STAFF TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT WHEN OTHER PROGRAMS HAVE STRUGGLED WITH THE SAME SITUATION?
Darlington: “It’s just the opposite, Jordan. Rather than convincing people not to waver, we encouraged them and respected them to go through their process and told them we would respect whatever that process was. There were people that stayed committed that called and said, ‘Hey, listen, I’m committed to you guys, but I need to go see what my options are.’ And we said, OK, our only ask is you just kind of keep us updated along the way. And I think that is what, I guess, if you could say what our secret sauce was, it’s starting from that perspective opposed to trying to handcuff people and not acknowledging what their experience is with a time like that we all went through together.
“What it says about our staff is that we were fortunate enough to have a group of individuals, both male and female and student workers, who bought in to our vision that we had. After we wrapped with signing day, we all just kind of sat there and took a deep breath and opened up the room for people to express where they were at any given moment. And there was a lot of honest conversation within that, it was a lot of appreciation for what we’ve been through. But, you know, it’s been emotionally taxing, and I think, like I mentioned before, I think we all got to a point where we were feeding off of our energy, right? Like, we’re all human, and there will be some days where I just didn’t know how much I had to give. But, in the position that I was in, being a steady force, giving a vision and a direction was extremely important. So, Steve and I would have these moments amongst each other, and literally behind closed doors, say, ‘All right, man, straighten your back and let’s get out here and do the job.’ Even if we were faking it until we’re making it, what made it was going into the analyst bullpen or talking to Bri (Miranda) or O (O’nalisa Hall), and they were feeding off the momentum we were creating and buying into the vision, and that was just the extra boost that we, myself would need, to kind of continue along the path even amongst the midst of uncertainty.”
WHAT WERE THE CHARACTER TRAITS, QUALITIES YOU LOOKED FOR AND HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT TO YOUR STAFF?
Darlington: “I come from, and so does Steven, we come from a NFL background. I think something that makes the two of us such a great team is I spent the majority of my time on the college side of recruiting which is evaluations and projecting future behavior and success. Steven has that in his arsenal, as well, but then he spent the lion’s share of his time as a pro scout. In a college landscape, it gives you high school recruiting, which would be very similar to the college game, and with the transfer portal that aligns well with the stuff that goes on from a pro scouting perspective. But we were raised to understand it like you have to do a lot of due diligence on who the player is off the field and how that goes into how they perform on the field. And so, when we got here like I said there was a lot of work to do in a very short period of time, and the volume of players within itself is massive. So having a profile has multiple purposes. One, it helps you eliminate and get to the group of players that you need to focus your attention on. And then, two, it gives your team a bit of an identity. I won’t go into the details of what, like, those bullet points are, but to be able to do it at the collegiate level — and it’s very similar at the league level — you have to find a way to have institutional knowledge of who UCLA is first. Understand, like, what the sports community, what the expectation is, and really understanding UCLA’s brand as well. And then after conversations with some of our current players, our academic support staff, our people in compliance, admissions, you start to kind of hone in on about five or six bullet points that are there that you have to be able to identify and say, ‘These are the guys that will probably be the most successful on this campus.’ And then, we went as far as identifying — you know, obviously we always start locally and then branch out to see, like, what type of schools can mirror the type of program, lifestyle, schedule that our current players are having. And so, we started there, obviously like a high academic acumen is very important. We play in one of the most competitive leagues, conferences in the country, and you’re legitimately the No. 1 public institution. So, being a student-athlete here legitimately is somebody that is willing and has the ability to compete on and off the field because our guys here get no passes in the classroom, either. But that’s how it came to be, you know, it started with the institutional knowledge. A couple of bumps and bruises along the way, obviously. And then, understanding the UCLA brand and the expectation and we took it from there.”
LASTLY, BY MY COUNT YOU HAVE 12 SIGNEES RIGHT NOW. ARE YOU EXPECTING ANY MORE TODAY OR IS THE 12 WHAT IT WILL BE TODAY?
Darlington: “No, we’re still waiting on a few more to jump in. There’s a few details that we kind of have to iron out with a few individual players. And then, you know, the good thing about it is a lot of people are taking this journey with us, and the people that remain really want to be here and aren’t focused on, like, ‘this has to be done by 7 a.m.’ or whatever. They want to take the time and go through the full process to see if they can get it in and if it’s a fit, or just the details will vary, right? And, you know, we’re ironing out those last few wrinkles now, but we’re expecting to have a few more people jump in.”
