Junior linebacker Isaiah Chisom is moving closer to home.
The West Hills, California native spent just 11 days in the transfer portal this past December, inking his holiday gift of a transfer deal with DeShaun Foster’s UCLA Bruins on Christmas Eve.
With fall camps now underway across the country, Chisom is suiting up in blue and gold after two years at Oregon State. This is the first college football season since the landmark House v. NCAA settlement decision and UCLA is one of the more transparent programs, in terms of sharing what the athletes’ payouts will look like.
“We went completely off [their] ability,” Foster said at Big Ten Media Days in Las Vegas. “[We’re] going to evaluate the talent and then place into where we think we need to pay them. Everything went good. The players understood that. They fired up about the situation and they loved that we had people explain to them, ‘how you’re getting this money,’ or, ‘why you’re not getting this money,’ and I think that resonated with our players.”
But for players like Chisom, it’s not about the paycheck. The linebacker was asked by the media after day one of camp Wednesday about his first payment, which is set to come in Friday.
“I think everybody’s excited,” Chisom laughed. “It’s great that the settlement went through and everybody is going to start getting paid.”
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The junior explained he and his teammates try not to discuss the specifics of their salaries.
“Obviously, people know how much certain people are getting, but at the end of the day, we all came here for one reason, and it’s to play football,” Chisom said. “The extra money we get is just extra. It’s not making anybody play harder or do anything like that. Like coach Foster said, ‘We still have to line it up. We could talk about how much money somebody’s getting, but at the end of the day, we still all have to perform.’”
UCLA Bruins on SI reporter Connor Moreno noted varying salary values among teammates could cause locker room tension, as evident in professional sports. According to Chisom, there’s no space for those kinds of attitudes on the Bruins’ roster.
“It definitely can expose a team,” Chisom said. “Or bring up a team. It really depends on the people you have on the roster. But the coaches did a great job, I’m going to keep giving them their flowers, but they’ve done a great job of bringing in the right type of character and people who want to play football and are excited to play in California and the Rose Bowl.”
Chisom is one of 32 athletes in UCLA’s No. 14 ranked 2025 transfer class, which includes the Bruins’ 2025 starting quarterback Nico Iamaleava from Tennessee.
“There might not be a better coach and coaching staff than Foster and his equipped to navigate a full team through this new era of college football,” Moreno wrote.
