The tears started before the rookie coach said his first word. They flowed again only 35 seconds into his opening remarks.
“Being the head coach here at UCLA,” DeShaun Foster said Tuesday morning, while trying to hold it together, “you guys have no idea, just …”
Foster paused in a losing battle to compose himself, his gentle sobbing drowned out by the roaring applause from a few hundred UCLA donors, players and alumni inside Pauley Pavilion’s pavilion club.
From star running back on UCLA’s last team to play in a Rose Bowl game to longtime running backs coach to head coach, Foster marinated in the realization that he had made it to the top at his alma mater.