Wherever He Goes, Success Follows: UCLA's Offense in Great Hands

The 2025-26 season will be pivotal for all Bruins this season, but it’ll be extra important for someone in particular:

Offensive coordinator Tino Sunseri.

The 36-year-old, first-time offensive coordinator will have his work cut out for him, not just in a loaded Big Ten, but at a UCLA program expecting a major improvement from last season.

Winning the offseason can only get you so far. While the transfer portal and the recruiting trail have been an overwhelming success, doing it on the field is a major difference.

Sunseri had a successful career in college as a quarterback, starting for the Panthers for the final three years of his career. Even though he didn’t get drafted, he signed with the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League, and even though he wasn’t the starter, he still won the Grey Cup in his first season.

But after realizing that perhaps a professional career wasn’t in the cards after getting cut by the Roughriders, Sunseri became a quality control assistant, starting with Florida State for two seasons in 2016 and 2017, and then transitioning to Tennessee in 2018 in the same role.

After three years in that position, he moved into a graduate assistant role with the University of Alabama and the legendary Nick Saban for two seasons.

To his credit, he contributed to the development of Tua Tagovailoa and was a part of the 2020 National Championship team with Mac Jones, DeVonta Smith, and Jaylen Waddle.

Now with a championship ring on his finger, it helped him earn a job with James Madison, becoming the Dukes’ quarterbacks coach for three seasons, one of those being the year JMU took the college football world by storm, going 11-2 in its second season in FBS play.

That was also the season where Jordan McCloud had the season of his life, completing a Sun Belt-leading 68% of his passes, as well as over 3,600 passing yards with 35 touchdowns.

It was an earth-shattering season, and it put a spotlight on Sunseri’s ability to develop quarterbacks.

College coaches took notice, and the University of Indiana wanted Sunseri to come on board as not just the quarterbacks coach, but the co-offensive coordinator.

It almost seemed like a trend. Wherever Sunseri went as a coach, the program thrived. Because all of a sudden, Indiana became a powerhouse in football.

The Hoosiers made the College Football Playoff for the first time in school history, helping Kurtis Rourke have an all-time season, throwing 29 touchdowns and only five interceptions for over 3,000 yards.

If Sunseri can do that with players like McCloud and Rourke, just imagine what he can do with an already proven player in Iamaleava.

Iamaleava has the SEC pedigree, the numbers to back it up, and now he has the quarterback coach who helped develop a Heisman candidate in Tagovailoa.

This is the first season where he has carte blanche with offensive play-calling, and if he can help elevate the Bruins into one of the better offenses in college football, it may not be long before schools start calling for him to be a head coach.