UCLA Stays In-House to Fill Borges’ Position

Bob Toledo’s to-do list just got significantly shorter.

The UCLA football coach announced Monday he has promoted Kelly Skipper from running backs coach to offensive coordinator, filling a void created last month when Al Borges made a lateral move to oversee California’s offense.

Although Skipper will be in charge of organizing the offensive meetings and helping assemble the game plan, Toledo will continue to call the plays.

“We’re going to basically run the same offense and call the plays the same way we did last season,” said Skipper, 33, a former standout running back at Fresno State who coached UCLA backs the last three seasons. “Everything is going to go through Coach Toledo. We share the same philosophy. We’ll be able to relate well in a lot of situations.”

Toledo did other shuffling of his staff. John Pearce, who coached defensive ends for the past two years, will coach quarterbacks. He’s familiar with the job, having coached tight ends and running backs at Texas A&M; when Toledo was Aggie offensive coordinator.

“If you can coach, you can coach any position,” Toledo said.

“If there’s a comfort zone for John, he feels more comfortable coaching quarterbacks than defensive linemen.”

Toledo said Skipper, in his role as running backs coach, has gained a strong grasp of the offense as a whole. During the 2000 season, DeShaun Foster recorded UCLA’s 13th 1,000-yard season and was a first-team all-Pacific 10 Conference selection.

In Skipper’s seven years as an assistant coach at Fresno State, he coached seven all-conference running backs, among them future NFL players Lorenzo Neal, Aaron Craver, Anthony Diagle, Ron Rivers and Reggie Brown. Skipper’s father, Jim, was a former NFL assistant and now coach of the XFL’s San Francisco Demons.

“Growing up around the game, you learn about a lot of different situations that come up,” the younger Skipper said. “You can’t really explain it, but you’re able to react to certain situations because you’ve seen them so much.”

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USC Coach Pete Carroll filled the final opening in his nine-man staff by selecting Lane Kiffin to work with the tight ends.

Kiffin, a quarterback at Fresno State in the mid-1990s, spent last season as an assistant with the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars. His father, Monte, worked with Carroll on several teams and is currently the defensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.