Somewhere, the late Bill Walton, between explaining to cronies the ice shelf in Antarctica and the politics of Luxembourg, is cackling, enjoying his I-told-you-so moment.

Not that he would like seeing his beloved alma mater, UCLA, squirming. It’s just that he was one of the few dissenters willing to decry his school’s move to the Big Ten, telling anybody who would listen that it was a move of fools.

Now, four years after that hejira was announced, the Bruins have taken the extraordinary step of firing their athletic director just as an academic year is beginning. UCLA has canned Martin Jarmond, emphasizing that it needs to get its finances in order, and oh by the way, it’s launching that campaign with the prospect it may owe Jarmond $6 million on his way out.

What a time to be alive.

This comes only 21 months after the Bruins gave Jarmond a contract extension, extolling him as somebody who could just as easily be running a Fortune 500 company.

Of course, that move came about a year before, in order: The embarrassment of Chip Kelly leaving the UCLA head football job for an assistant coach’s position; Jarmond’s appointment of Deshaun Foster to the post, from which he would be cashiered after a mere 15 games; and a scathing story in the Los Angeles Times a year ago, in which – 11 months after Jarmond’s contract extension – program donors went public with sizzling criticism.

One wonders whether Jarmond’s biggest whiff had nothing to do with any of those failings.

That might have come back in the early years of a tenure that began back in 2020, when the Bruins decided to throw in with USC’s wanderlust and join the Big Ten. That move, announced in the summer of 2022, gives us, as the ’26 football season begins, Cal and Stanford in the ACC and Washington State and Oregon State in a Pac-12 that now features Fresno State and Utah State.

It’s entirely possible that UCLA’s problems exist independent of its conference. After all, the Bruins and Trojans are reaping a full share of Big Ten revenues, and that came to about $79 million for the 2024-25 fiscal year. It’s a bit staggering that UCLA, which carried $52 million in debt after fiscal 2024, can’t make a go of it with that Big Ten windfall.

UCLA has a severe problem on its hands with its football home. The Rose Bowl is 27 miles from campus and the school has attempted a “meh” move to SoFi Stadium. Any notion of a new facility at its home base would be more of a hot-button issue with nearby residents than feasible.

Meanwhile, the mercenary NIL world is an uncomfortable fit at UCLA. The place has won more NCAA championships than anybody else, but it’s also a top-notch academic bastion and the administration isn’t given to any win-at-all-costs impulses.

Still, is it possible a little more foresight by Jarmond and the Bruins back in 2021-22 --standing up to USC’s jones to migrate to the Midwest -- might have staved off the ruination of the Pac-12?

Early returns are mixed at best on this Big Ten fling by the western schools. Oregon is prospering most in football, while Washington shows promise in ’26 while leaking oil financially as it awaits a full share of conference revenue. USC faces a make-or-break year with Lincoln Riley, but the Bruins are thrashing around in the dark, trying not to stamp themselves a perennial second-tier program (maybe) in the league.

In basketball, it’s been generally deathly for the four, partly because of a brutal travel regimen. Washington and Oregon have experienced downturns and the LA schools have been also-rans in a tough league.

For years, it seems UCLA has been undergoing an identity crisis, battling the big-sports colossus at USC while its leadership fights to retain its academic elitism. The quest hasn’t become any easier in the NIL era.

Now, just as the Bruins seemed to have hit on a good football hire in James Madison’s Bob Chesney, they tell him they’re firing his boss before he coaches a game.

It’s almost as awkward as being in the wrong conference.