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On-lookers from the outside can’t help but press themselves up against the glass doors of the Wasserman Football Center, trying to figure out what is going on any given day at the UCLA football facility.

For head coach DeShaun Foster’s staff, it’s a regular occurrence and just business as usual, especially on a Saturday that featured the team’s sixth practice of spring camp in conjunction with a fundraising event for donors and a large group of visiting recruits — both locally and nationally. There weren’t too many minutes that went by without a donor or a staff member, with a recruit in tow, either entering or exiting the elevator doors to the right.

And it’s recruiting that largely determines the future of every program in the country. Relationships, development and culture have all long been buzzwords for recruits who visit just about any campus and meet with various coaching staffs throughout the process.

What does it exactly mean and does it carry weight? Well, that’s what Bruin Blitz attempted to find out, with a-fly-on-the-wall type of access to the Wasserman lobby in the morning and later in the afternoon revealing it wasn’t just a pitch.

“They really treat you how you’re supposed to be treated. They treat you like family,” said 2026 three-star quarterback Cole Bergeron, who was among a handful of visitors from Louisiana and one of four recruits on the visit to land a UCLA offer.

That would be a UCLA staff littered with influential recruiters after Foster shook things up in the offseason.

Among the new additions is receivers coach/recruiting coordinator Burl Toler III, who spent the last seven years coaching at his alma mater California.

Earlier during the second week of camp, Toler addressed the media for the first time and said his additional title is something that’s actually instilled in all of the staff.

“It’s just I take pride in developing talent, and recognizing and noticing and retaining guys,” Toler said Thursday. “So that’s all encompassing in recruiting coordinating, and right now it’s really all hands on deck.

“I pride myself on building relationships, so using some of those techniques to bleed throughout the rest of the staff. The best thing about our staff, they’re all personable. I consider really us all recruiting coordinators. … We know everybody that’s coming to campus. We know why we need them. We don’t just invite everybody here to be recruited. We specifically go out, identify guys.”

That personable staff Toler described goes beyond the coaches, too, with others in support roles ready to greet recruits at the door and from behind a front desk emblazoned with “WASSERMAN” in giant lettering across the front. On a nearby table sits ready-made branded lanyards with the visitors’ names printed on — whether it be the recruit, an accompanying coach or family member.

The main lobby, in fact, represents in many ways what UCLA is trying to sell: professional success, whether it be in football or another avenue.

Visible from outside of the front entrance to the building — and what stops the average passers-by in their tracks — is a wall of Jordan brand shoes, with five rows of four different shoes on each side, and the familiar Jumpman logo and the signature UCLA script down the middle to divide the wall. What’s a Power 4 football facility without some flash?

On the left upon entering the building is a list of national award winners who played for the program, from Gary Beban’s recognition as the 1967 Maxwell Award recipient to Laiatu Latu’s Lombardi and Ted Hendricks honors in 2023.

Straight ahead farther down the wall is Beban’s photo and recognition of his Heisman Trophy won that same season. Directly next to that reads “Bruins Breaking Barriers,” with a black and white photo of Woody Strode, Jackie Robinson and Kenny Washington — all football teammates in 1939 — and their respective monumental moments in breaking the color barriers in the NFL and Major League Baseball and helping shape society beyond sports.

There are several more bowl game trophies and individual awards that decorate the lobby, too, along with three sofas placed in a “U” shape around a coffee table. Several large groups of visitors, including local schools Hesperia-Oak Hills, San Clemente and Anaheim-Western, lounged in the area before heading onto the field to watch practice.

Then, there’s the actual conversations with the coaches that signals the true start to the visit.

The staff’s connection to Bergeron’s 7-on-7 team, 4th Quarter Mentality, for example, is one tied to new Bruins offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Tino Sunseri.

Donald Fusilier, who more commonly goes by the moniker Coach Fuse, is a coach for 4th Quarter Mentality and the offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach at Abbeville High School. He made the trip with the recruits for the visit.

Fusilier said he and Sunseri are “good friends,” with the connection starting back when Sunseri was a graduate assistant at Alabama from 2019 to 2020.

“He’s relatable, he’s intense,” Fusilier said of Sunseri. “He comes from coach (Nick) Saban’s coaching tree, so you know he’s very detailed in how he presents the information. It’s very relatable, and he’s a winner. … He’s gotten results, even at places that people don’t think they’re supposed to win at.”

Sunseri, Toler and the staff speak with a conviction, and not just with reporters when it’s their time to address the media. It appears to resonate with the athletes and their families who visit, too.

On campus on this particular day was a handful of top priority recruits nearing the end of their recruitments including Rex Waterman, a 2026 three-star offensive tackle at Chandler (Ariz.) Hamilton. It was a second trip to UCLA in less than three months, and he will be back for an official visit from May 16-18.

Waterman’s mother, Miley, a Southern California native from Long Beach, was also on the visit and said UCLA showcased a welcoming environment.

The Watermans arrived on campus around 7 a.m. — 90 minutes before the start of practice — and were among the last visitors to leave the facility nearly seven hours later.

“As a mother, one of the top priorities is that it feels like a family,” Miley Waterman said.

“Here, of course, being from SoCal — I was born and raised here — so it’s really fun being back in L.A. The coaching staff here is just really into Rex and taken him under their wing and paying a lot of special attention to him. The kids today on the visit have been really welcoming, a lot of the players came and talked to him a lot. That was really cool.”

Rex Waterman, who has the Bruins in his top three along with Duke and Nebraska, got his first opportunity to see UCLA practice after previously visiting for junior day in January.

From the start of the visit, he said, things got off on the right foot after all the current UCLA linemen embraced him immediately.

“When I went in the meeting room, they came up and introduced themselves to me — which I loved,” Waterman said. “It was all organic. Like, none of the coaches told anybody to come up to me, but they all just did. That meant so much to me. That’s part of the culture here, just introduce yourself to anybody you see. That’s something that stood out to me.”

Another high-priority 2026 recruit on campus with a future official visit was Littleton (Colo.) Heritage four-star tight end Camden Jensen. He is currently the No. 3-ranked overall player in the state of Colorado by Rivals.

Jensen, though, made it a multi-day trip and also attended Thursday’s practice.

During Saturday’s practice, Jensen got a closer look at the action on the field as he stood next to UCLA recruiting assistant Aaron Brin during one of the early periods open to the media.

Jensen announced in January that UCLA was among his top seven schools. Like Waterman, he also will be part of the group of official visitors from May 16-18.

Jensen, though, was making his first trip to the school and said the extended stay allowed him to get a better feel for the consistency of the program from one day to the next.

Jensen joked that Brin told him he couldn’t give everything away for what to expect on his official visit, but the unofficial ramped up his anticipation for what was still to come.

“It made me excited, for sure,” Jensen said.

“It was good to be out here for multiple practices and multiple days. … I like how (the campus) is kind of secluded from the rest of L.A. It’s nice, I really like the campus. It’s pretty clean-cut, too, the brick buildings are a nice touch. It’s really nice.”

Brin is one of several additional key members on a recruiting staff headlined by general manager Butler Benton, assistant general manager of recruiting personnel Chris Carter and director of player personnel Stacey Ford.

Others in similar roles as Brin include recruiting/personnel assistant JD Lake, analysts Jordan Bland, Pete Mayberry and Peter Warrick Jr. It’s a group that assists in scouting potential recruits, sometimes delegated by region, and helps Foster and his assistant coaches with the due diligence for a program that also has to account for the high admissions standards as part of the evaluation.

Further assistance comes in the form of the on-campus recruiting staff led by director of on-campus recruiting O’nalisa Hall and director of recruiting operations Brianna Miranda. It’s a team that ensures the organization of the visits — both unofficial and official — run smoothly. In the midst of all the unofficial visitors, the Bruins were also hosting Indiana transfer defensive back Jamier Johnson and there was little turnaround time to get moving onto the next order of business later that evening.

In other words, there are a lot of moving parts to a Power 4 college football staff beyond just the coaches to make the machine run. Foster has plenty of additional helping hands.

The calendar doesn’t slow down anytime soon, either. The team’s April 18 practice will be the Friday Night Lights extravaganza that drew an estimated 2,000 visitors among the fans, alumni and hundreds of recruits for last year’s event. The end of spring camp in early May will only mean time to head back on the recruiting trail, while simultaneously hosting 2026 official visitors week after week well into June.

Put it altogether and UCLA is banking on its assurances that the program’s trajectory is on the upswing, hoping it pays dividends in a recruiting world that has several factors from name, image and likeness dollars to early playing time to development for an NFL future.

Instead of pointing fingers and bellyaching about the downfall of college football like some of his head coaching counterparts around the country have about NIL and the transfer portal, Foster has openly embraced today’s normal as “the nature of the business.”

When he signed his 2025 class last December, the shoot-for-the-moon optimism in Foster pointed to Colorado and head coach Deion Sanders as sort of a blueprint for a quick turnaround. Another tough gauntlet in the Big Ten awaits this fall to see just how much closer Year 2 will be to contending-caliber on-field results.

But Saturday at least showed that Foster and the Bruins are hellbent on putting in the necessary work to get there.