New UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond’s NC roots a platform for his success
Long before Martin Jarmond was the youngest athletic director in the Power 5, before he got the UCLA job at the age of 40 last month, he got his start in college athletics as a ball boy at Fayetteville State, watching the late, great Jeff Capel coach.
That’s how deep Jarmond’s North Carolina roots run. He was born in Goldsboro, grew up in Fayetteville and played basketball at Pine Forest High and UNC Wilmington, and his parents have lived in Raleigh for more than two decades. All of which became the platform for his rapid and massive success in college sports, going from Michigan State to Ohio State to becoming the first African American athletic director at Boston College in a mere 16 years.
“In my journey, I’ve never stopped to consider my age or what I’m doing,” Jarmond told The News & Observer in a video interview Thursday. “Every opportunity I’ve been afforded, I’ve tried to make the most of it. I know what I represent, being black and from North Carolina. Hopefully I can make the path a little easier for those who see me, whether it’s because I’m black or I’m young — white, black, whatever, I hope people can find some morsel of inspiration. That’s important to me. I’m just a kid from Fayetteville.”
Now Jarmond is on an even bigger stage, taking what would under normal circumstances be one of the most attractive jobs in the country, in a major market full of wealthy graduates and layered with history and tradition. But Jarmond inherits crippling athletic debt, an odd football situation — the Rose Bowl is the Rose Bowl, but it’s also a half-hour from campus on a good day — and too many years of irrelevance in major sports, let alone the Pac-12’s status as the weakest link in the Power 5.
There’s also an opportunity there to restore past glory, and Jarmond’s ability to communicate with athletes and alumni alike as well as his history as an elite fundraiser make him a good match for the job. At Boston College, he raised more than $100 million in two years on a campus that is often lethargic at best when it comes to supporting anything but hockey. He accomplished so much in his brief time at BC, there were no hard feelings when he left. That’s a rare thing in the back-stabbing world of college sports.
But it would have been impossible to stay, because the platform UCLA provides him has few parallels nationally, especially as an African American man taking over at a major university in a massive market at a moment in history when voices like his have never had more power. Already this week, before he even officially starts on July 1, he launched a voter education and registration initiative for UCLA athletes.
His views on name, image and likeness rights, for example, differ considerably from those expressed by some of his ACC counterparts recently. While Jarmond said he respects the concerns expressed by Duke’s Kevin White and UNC’s Bubba Cunningham, and shares some of them, he also sees it as less of a threat than an opportunity. One study found UCLA women’s gymnasts would be among those to benefit most.
“We’re in the business of education and Los Angeles is the nation’s second-largest media market,” Jarmond said. “California was a leader in (NIL) and there’s legislation in I think 34 states, so I look at this as something that’s probably going to happen. So why not be at the forefront and educate our young people on their brand and their value and some of the things they’re going to need when they leave college?”
That would fit UCLA’s legacy of playing an outsized role in the intersection of sports and race and societal change, from Jackie Robinson to Kenny Washington to Arthur Ashe to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (and even Bill Walton), a legacy Jarmond is all too excited to embrace — and expand.
“It’s extremely humbling. I have to pinch myself because as a kid growing up in North Carolina, I never saw this opportunity,” Jarmond said. “I don’t take it lightly. It’s very humbling. I’m honored. Some of those names, and there’s so many more — Ann Meyers Drysdale, coach John Wooden, it goes on and on, Jackie Joyner-Kersee — so for me it’s one that I take very seriously. I understand the significance from a racial perspective and a leadership perspective.
“Our student-athletes that have come before through the doors at UCLA have been leaders, not only in their sport but really in the world. You think about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and his impact on the world: significant. I look at myself as just a steward of this program. My job is to build on that history, that strong legacy of greatness and change, and how do we carry that into the future, into a new era.”
