As he munched on a ham and cheddar omelet with sliced tomatoes, along with a side of potatoes he didn’t order, Dan Guerrero contemplated something that was hard to swallow.
College athletics in 2026.
The former longtime UCLA athletics director, who retired only six years ago, has seen such revolutionary change that the landscape now bears little resemblance to the one he left behind.
“It’s almost a different phenomenon in so many ways,” Guerrero told the California Post during a breakfast interview.
Some college football rosters top $40 million in NIL and revenue sharing. Players are free to bounce from one team to another. Anyone who doesn’t like something can just file a lawsuit.
The chaos has prompted Guerrero to add an unofficial title — therapist — to his lengthy list of retirement endeavors.
Long known for leading a life of service, he’s happy to counsel colleagues grappling with the current state of the college sports business.
“It’s very hard for them to put their arms around what’s happening right now and they’re struggling in so many respects and I saw that coming late in my career; I saw a lot of these things beginning to emanate,” Guerrero said. “I didn’t expect they would be to this degree this soon, but it’s happened and everyone has to adapt and adjust to the reality, like it or not.”
What’s his best advice?
Understand that one thing hasn’t changed — college athletes besides those in the major revenue sports still pick their school for the same reasons. They want to attend that school, they love their coach and they crave a certain major or social experience that only that institution can provide.
“I said you have to hold onto that,” Guerrero said, “because we got into this thing because we wanted to provide access and opportunity for student-athletes to pursue their aspirations and their dreams and still do that. It’s a different environment for sure, but fundamentally, all of that is still the same.”
Even in retirement, Guerrero remains something of a major power broker in the college game.
He’s a partner in the sports practice group of DHR Global, an executive search firm that was heavily involved in the recent hiring of Purdue athletics director Tommy McClelland. Guerrero also serves as the president of UniUSA — the governing body for U.S. global university sports — as well as on the board of directors of an eclectic group of organizations, including the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
It sounds like a lot for someone who is supposed to be traveling and bouncing the grandkids on his lap.
“I think I’m failing retirement in a lot of ways,” Guerrero, who will turn 75 in November, said with a wry smile, “but that’s a good thing. … The things on my calendar are the things that I want to do.”
Remaining true to the Blue-and-Gold, Guerrero still makes time for UCLA games whenever they fit into his schedule. During his 18 years as athletics director, the Bruins won 32 NCAA championships in 15 sports, just part of the reason he was inducted into the Hall of Fame for the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics in 2021.
Many coaches that Guerrero hired remain, including men’s basketball coach Mick Cronin and women’s basketball coach Cori Close. Guerrero recalled telling Close, always full of vigor, that she needed to be patient when she took over the program in the spring of 2011.
“You know, we’d love to be able to push the button and go straight to the penthouse,” Guerrero said, repeating his message, “but it doesn’t happen that way, we’re going to have to go floor by floor. But I’m committed and will be committed to make that happen over time.”
In April, Close and the Bruins reached the pinnacle, cutting down the nets in Phoenix after winning the program’s first NCAA title. Guerrero was inside the Mortgage Matchup Center after rearranging his schedule to fly in the previous day.
“I was like a proud papa in many respects watching her,” Guerrero said, “and I believe with all my heart that Mick has the tools to do the same thing on the men’s side, it’s just very, very difficult now with the dollars are being spent on players and the transfer portal and how that’s unfolding for even someone as great of a coach as Mick to be able to get over that hump, but he’ll find a way.”
Managing retirement Guerrero’s way does include plenty of family time and travel, including yearly trips to Nettuno, Italy, the birthplace of baseball in that country. It’s a spot that Guerrero knows well, having played the sport professionally in Italy for four years upon his graduation from UCLA.
But he invariably finds his way back to campus, a place that invigorates him to this day. He loves to tell the story of his father explaining to him, as a sixth grader, the significance of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier after attending UCLA.
“He said, ‘UCLA is a university for the people,’ ” Guerrero said, “and what he meant by that is a person like Jackie, an African-American or a minority like me, could not only be welcome there but that they could flourish there, and I never forgot that.”
Those words became even more meaningful after UCLA gave Guerrero a baseball scholarship and he returned to become athletics director. In 2018, his beloved school saved his life when he received treatment at UCLA Medical Center for squamous cell carcinoma in the lymph nodes of his neck, leading to full remission.
Recounting what his alma mater has done for him, Guerrero became glassy-eyed about his enduring love affair.
“What can I say,” he said, “about how blessed I am to have had that happen to me over my life?”
