Six years before being named the starting quarterback at UCLA, Ty Dieffenbach was just trying to go viral with JoJo Siwa.
Dieffenbach, 21, appeared in a resurfaced TikTok video alongside Dance Moms star Siwa, 23, that has spread all over social media since he stepped in for injured UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava on Saturday, September 10.
The clip was originally posted by Siwa in July 2020 and shows the pair participating in a dance trend to Doja Cat’s “Say So.”
“@ty.dieffenbach ur a pretty good dancer 🤘🏻,” Siwa captioned the clip, which has received nearly 675,000 likes and over 3,000 comments. Dieffenbach’s TikTok account has since been deleted.
It’s unclear how Dieffenbach and Siwa came into each other’s orbits or the extent of their relationship, but college football fans have been having a field day.
“UCLA’s hopes and dreams now rest with this guy at quarterback,” one person joked via X. “God speed Bruins.”
Another commented directly on Siwa’s video, “That’s my qb.”
Dieffenbach — who graduated from Agoura Hills High School in Agoura Hills, California — took over as UCLA’s quarterback at the start of second half of the Bruins’ game against Oregon on Saturday after Iamaleava, 22, was ruled out with a knee injury.
It has since been revealed that Iamaleava will miss the rest of the season.
Dieffenbach, a senior, was admirable in relief, completing three passes for 43 yards and one touchdown, guiding UCLA to a 17-15 win and improving their record to 5-0 on the season.
“When someone goes down, and someone’s gotta step up, you’re either exposed or you’re revealed,” UCLA head coach Bob Chesney said after the game. “One of the two is going to happen when your number gets called, and for Ty to step up in that moment when Nico couldn’t go and to put himself in the spot where he was revealed for knowing the run game, knowing what to get us into, the touchdown pass I thought he threw.”
Despite Dieffenbach stepping in against Oregon, Chesney, 49, explained it’s still a “week-to-week” evaluation between him and Nico’s younger brother, sophomore Madden Iamaleava.
“I felt Ty had a really nice week, and that put us in that spot,” Chesney said. “This is just one of those things that I’m sure if Madden would’ve went in there, he would have done a phenomenal job as well. But I thought Ty was the guy we decided on at this moment based on the previous week of practice.”
Dieffenbach is expected to be the starter when No. 12 UCLA hosts Wisconsin on Saturday, October 17.
