LOS ANGELES – Tucked in a small corner of UCLA’s athletic campus west of Spaulding Field, a reception is underway, as a crowd of athletics administrators, high-profile alumni and donors in sports coats and ties hobnob under a canopy, sipping on Arnold Palmers and baking in an uncomfortably thick late-summer heat.
They’ve gathered to watch ceremonial shovels dig into ceremonial dirt. But they're also here to see the future, to hear the grand pronouncements of “the next step” for UCLA sports. In a few minutes, the university will break ground on two major athletics practice facilities, the Wasserman Football Center and Mo Ostin Basketball Center – two long overdue projects for programs so recently mired in mediocrity.