Bruins hire offensive line coach

Wisconsin offensive line coach Bob Palcic will rejoin the UCLA football staff as offensive line coach, the school announced today.

Palcic, 59, spent the last two seasons with the Badgers. He will be the Bruins’ fourth offensive line coach in the last five seasons.

Before working at Wisconsin, Palcic spent 12 seasons as an NFL assistant with the New Orleans Saints, Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions and Atlanta Falcons from 1994 to 2005.

He was the offensive line coach at UCLA in 1993, where he was on the same staff with new Bruins’ head coach Rick Neuheisel.

“We’ve been friends for a long time, and he wants me to go out there and help him resurrect the UCLA program, and I thought that’s what I should do,” Palcic told the Madison Capital Times. “We’ve stayed in touch over the years. And he has always asked me if I would go with him if he ever got another head coaching job, and I always told him that I would. So when he called me up and offered me a substantial raise, I just thought it felt right. This is really the first opportunity we had to get back together.”

Palcic spent one season as the line coach at USC. He also coached at Ohio State and Arizona. He replaces Bob Connelly, who spent one season at UCLA.

chris.foster@latimes.com