UCLA’s athletic director Martin Jarmond spoke with B1G Network’s Dave Revsine to talk about joining the B1G on Thursday. He seems very excited about the opportunity.

Jarmond has actually had assistant AD roles with both Michigan State (2003-2009) and Ohio State (2009-2017) before becoming UCLA’s AD in 2020. In 2017, he became the youngest AD in all the Power 5 conferences when he accepted the Boston College job. Jarmond was also the 1st African-American AD in Boston College history.

He stated that the decision of joining the B1G also had to do with academics as much as it did with athletics:

“With UCLA being the number one public institution in the country, most applied to school in the country, academically strong and that’s what the B1G is,” said Jarmond. “You start there, and then you look at competition. UCLA has won 119 national championships, 2nd-most in the country. We are used to competing and achieving at a high level of excellence, and that’s what the B1G is. When you look at the schools in the B1G there’s just a lot of symmetry in our values, academic mission, and our pursuits.”