As Chip Kelly bolts UCLA for lesser job, Bruins face messy Big Ten future

In December of 2017, Chip Kelly was the hottest name on the college football coaching market — and what a market it was. 

Florida wanted him. 

Tennessee made an offer. 

Nebraska checked in. 

Arizona State was intrigued. 

But Kelly, fresh off head coaching stints with two different NFL teams, wanted UCLA for his much-anticipated return to college football. He wanted the city life of Los Angeles. He wanted the challenge of turning a perennial underachiever into a contender. He wanted to do something befitting the iconoclastic and quirky personality he had cultivated at every stop from small colleges in New England to the big-time at Oregon.

Nobody else in the profession would have picked UCLA among the array of options he had at his disposal six years ago. Kelly did. 

And now he leaves it pretty much as he found it: A sad-sack, aimless mess of a football program that may need years to recover from the damage that has been done.

How badly did Kelly want out of UCLA by the end? For the last few weeks, his representatives had floated his name for pretty much every offensive coordinator job in the NFL. As it turned out, the team that rescued him came not just in the college ranks but in the conference UCLA will be joining next year.

If the Bruins didn’t have a full picture of what they’ll be up against in the Big Ten, it will be shown in stark relief when Kelly is on the sidelines at Ohio State calling plays for his protégé Ryan Day. 

It would be one thing if UCLA had fired Kelly and his next career move was taking a step back and being a coordinator for a little while. But to do it on his own volition? Willfully going a rung down the career ladder while jumping to a team in the same conference? 

Yikes, UCLA. 

Ironically, Kelly outlasted most of his peers who changed jobs in the 2017-18 coaching cycle. Florida fired Dan Mullen a couple years ago. Tennessee’s eventual choice of Jeremy Pruitt was a misadventure of epic proportions both on the field and within the NCAA rulebook. Scott Frost experienced one of the most disastrous homecomings in the history of the sport at Nebraska. Arizona State brought Herm Edwards out of the television booth, which was at least good for a few laughs. 

Kelly at UCLA? It was ultimately too boring. The spread, up-tempo offense that had spurred Oregon to a 46-7 record during his reign in Eugene was no longer novel or effective. Kelly didn’t show much interest in recruiting the top prospects from Southern California. 

In 2021, Kelly’s fourth year at UCLA, he finally put a winning product on the field. But 8-4, 9-4 and 8-5 records — while never seriously contending for a Pac-12 title — didn’t do much to excite UCLA’s fan base. As attendance dwindled last season, it looked like Kelly might get fired. Much of that talk ended in November when he beat USC, 38-20.

It’s unclear whether the UCLA’s administration and boosters still believed in Kelly, didn’t have a better option in mind or simply didn’t want to pay the relatively small $8.5 million buyout it would have owed him during the height of coaching change season. 

In retrospect, that was a major mistake. 

Because now, Kelly’s departure means hiring a coach in the middle of February, and the transfer portal opening up for the next month will give other programs free reign to poach from the Bruins’ roster. Neither of those things are ideal — particularly right now when the spring semester has already started and player movement has almost come to a halt. 

And any candidate for UCLA should have some serious questions about why Kelly, who had four years and more than $24 million left on his contract, would take a pay cut to go be a college coordinator. 

Is the roster really that bad? Does UCLA just not care that much about competing at the highest level in football? Is the school’s NIL program so lackluster that it’s impossible to recruit?

While it’s fair to say that Kelly was a massive disappointment on the field and that UCLA probably should have fired him two months ago, it’s also quite a slap in the face to watch him walk out the door for a college coordinator job. When UCLA has a head coach opening, it is supposed to be looking at assistants from places like Ohio State, not the other way around. 

Kelly no longer has the same cachet he once had, but he’s still a significant presence in the sport and a well-respected offensive mind. There are probably dozens of reasons it didn’t work out at UCLA — some of them Kelly’s fault and some belonging to a school that has always been resource-poor compared to its rivals. 

But for decades and decades, it always felt like someone could harness what UCLA does have — the sunshine, the glitz of Hollywood, the fertile recruiting ground in Southern California — and make a big push toward the top of the sport. 

Six years ago, it seemed like Kelly was the best chance UCLA ever had to break that cycle. Instead, as cash-strapped UCLA moves into the rich new neighborhood of the Big Ten, Kelly’s departure shows just how difficult it will be to fit in.