How did UCLA’s defense get its Philly flavor? Meet defensive coordinator Colin Hitschler

Colin Hitschler can still envision his earliest memories of wrestling and football, the sports that directly tie him to his father, Charles. He’d sit on his father’s lap in the corner of a wrestling mat, and roam the sidelines as his father coached football, often serving as the ball boy.

He says “coaching was probably in my blood,” but it wasn’t until he spent time away from football that he actually developed the itch to do it.

“I spent more time being around coaches than probably players as a little guy,” Hitschler told The Inquirer by phone recently. “The opportunity to to chase it — being a wrestler in college probably made me hungrier for losing football, and that obstacle led me to coaching.

“Wrestling is a mentality, and that, I think, is what I bring from wrestling to the football field and to coaching, and something I try to instill within our guys … the challenges that wrestling presents are very similar to the course of a long season of football.”

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Hitschler, who played football and wrestled at Penn Charter, then wrestled for four years at Penn, has dedicated his career to coaching. Now at UCLA as the football team’s defensive coordinator in his 16th year of coaching, Hitschler is quickly helping turn around the undefeated Bruins in the program’s first year with Kulpmont, Pa., native Bob Chesney as head coach.

Hitschler first taste of working in football, though, came with the Eagles in 2009. Sean McDermott — the La Salle College High graduate, former Eagles defensive coordinator, and fellow wrestler — invited Hitschler to be an Eagles training camp assistant in 2009.

“He kind of took me under his wing and gave me my first opportunity to be around it,” Hitschler recalled. “And then I was lucky enough to get to the Chiefs and work in the personnel department. And then I realized that my true passion was coaching.”

Hitschler, 40, didn’t land his first coaching opportunity until two years later, at Division III school Salve Regina in Newport, R.I. It was there that he first worked for Chesney, who took over the program in 2010 after five seasons at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

The pair spent just one season together, with Hitschler serving as the co-special teams coordinator and defensive line coach. There was a 14-year gap between coaching stops together, reuniting at James Madison in 2025, but Chesney’s “energy” and “how much he loved ball” were traits that stuck with Hitschler.

“Some of the late nights, just figuring out little obstacles, and just the way he made his players love the game,” Hitschler said of Chesney, who has one losing season in 16 years as a head coach across three levels of college football. “I was obviously lucky enough to coach a number of other places … but the ability to reunite with him and his energy and the way he makes people feel about the team and the game — that was an opportunity that presented itself that was special.”

Hitschler himself made a quick ascent up the coaching ranks. He coached at Widener, then spent time as a graduate assistant at Arkansas State and South Alabama, and by the time he left the latter in 2017, he had become a safeties coach.

From there, he spent five years on Luke Fickell’s staff at Cincinnati, starting as a defensive quality control coach in 2018 and later becoming co-defensive coordinator by 2022. He followed Fickell, whom he considers “a mentor” to Wisconsin in 2023, then spent 2024 at Alabama as co-defensive coordinator on Kalen DeBoer’s staff, before rejoining Chesney at James Madison.

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Every stop he’s been, Hitschler has brought his Philly roots along, even down to his defensive philosophy. He watched Jim Johnson’s Eagles defenses that featured Brian Dawkins and Jeremiah Trotter Sr. and tried to emulate it as a defensive playcaller.

“I was a diehard Eagles fan watching Dawkins and Trotter and those guys create havoc and stay aggressive, and a lot of the front multiplicity that [Johnson] did back in the day,” Hitschler said, who also noted that Johnson’s grandson, Brandon Rose, is on UCLA’s staff as the director of player personnel. “His aggressive mantra is deep within me. … When you grew up in Philly in that era, you loved the Eagles’ defense.”

Building connections on the recruiting trail is an essential part of Hitschler’s duties, and his deep connections to Philly are prevalent on UCLA’s roster. Three locals are playing out west: St. Joseph’s Prep graduates Anthony Sacca and Maxwell Roy, and La Salle College High grad Darold DeNgohe.

The 6-foot-2, 312-pound DeNgohe had previous ties to Chesney. He was a freshman on the JMU team when Curt Cignetti led it in 2023, then remained with the program in 2024 when Chesney took over. After he spent last season at Rutgers, a relationship that dated back to high school finally came to fruition at UCLA.

“Coach Hitsch gave me my first offer in high school when he was at Cincinnati,” said DeNgohe, who emigrated to the United States from Cameroon at age 9. “That was my first offer. He was one of the first college coaches to really believe in me. So it was really cool. I’ve always wanted to play for him. So when we got this opportunity, we were both really excited to like finally accomplish it and just finally play with each other.”

The combination of Hitschler, Sacca, DeNgohe, and the hodgepodge of other transfers and holdovers from the previous staff has helped UCLA’s defense emerge as a formidable unit.

It held an Oregon offense that entered last week’s game ranked fifth in points and passing yards, and 11th in total offense to just 15 points and 272 yards of total offense. The Bruins entered the game ranked second nationally in turnovers per game (3) and forced an outstanding seven more against the Ducks.

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Hitschler says the defense call themselves “a version of the Bruin Bullies, or what we aspire to be,” as an homage to the Flyers’ Broad Street Bullies era, and the results are showing. UCLA picked up their first win at Oregon since 2004, and face Hitschler’s mentor, Fickell, and his Wisconsin team on Saturday (7:30 p.m., NBC10). UCLA is seeking a 6-0 for the second time in the last 20 years.

“I think that combo of brotherly love and ‘Broad Street Bully’ mentality, I think that’s unique about Philadelphia,” said Hitschler, “as somebody that’s kind of lived in a number of different places. I think it’s important that the players feel who I am, and a large part of who I am is the city that I grew up in, and the people that I were around. So bringing that mentality and that personality to our players is really important to me.”

Added DeNgohe: “We try to bring the physicality and the toughness from the city into the defense, and that’s how we play. We try to have that mindset as the ‘Broad Street Bullies.’”