LOS ANGELES — The seeds of the exodus were first planted in mid-November, the week before UCLA limped into the Coliseum to pummel USC, both programs bruised and disappointed and on the doorstep of a major overhaul.
Rumors – ultimately unfounded, but rumors nonetheless – around Bruins head coach Chip Kelly’s job status reached a fever pitch in the lead-up to the crosstown rivalry, coming off a flat loss to Arizona State. So freshman safety Kamari Ramsey and father Stacy sat down for a conversation that week, discussing the future. Stacy played football at Kennedy High and was wise enough to read writing on the wall, scrawled in invisible ink: Change was coming at UCLA, and it might well center not on Kelly but the new defensive coordinator who had been the high point of UCLA’s season.
“Kamari, the way your defense has been performing – this coach, a lot of people going to be coming after him,” Stacy recalled telling his son that week. “You do realize that, right?”
And still, it was somewhat of a shock a couple of weeks later for the Ramseys to find that D’Anton Lynn, the young architect of UCLA’s best defense in decades, had not only jumped ship but jumped ship straight across town – to a USC defense the Bruins had just pulverized. Dad, is this real? Ramsey texted his father when the Lynn news broke.
And elsewhere, Lynn’s departure was “devastating” for cornerback John Humphrey, as mother Bridget put it. Both defensive backs had found comfort at UCLA specifically because of Lynn, Ramsey as an up-and-coming safety with NFL dreams, Humphrey a veteran who just wanted some stability after playing for three coordinators in four years.
So in the span of a few hours on Dec. 21, a couple of weeks after hitting the transfer portal, Ramsey and Humphrey committed to USC in a loosely connected effort. It represented the next step in USC’s overhaul of the secondary, hiring Houston defensive coordinator Doug Belk to coach their DBs just a few…
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