The UCLA that Chip Kelly began coaching in 2018 was very different than the UCLA he will one day leave.
A few short years ago, the Bruins were members of a stable 12-team league filled with traditional rivals such as USC, California and Stanford.
Starting next year, however, UCLA will play football in a Big Ten chock-full of unfamiliar foes as the Pac-12 passes into the history books. With conference realignment at a flashpoint, Kelly proposed a unique idea Tuesday to stop the madness.
“Notre Dame is an independent in football, but they’re in a conference for everything else,” Kelly said, per the Los Angeles Times. “Why aren’t we all independent for football? Take the 64 teams in Power 5 and make that one division, take the 64 teams in Group of 5, make that another division. We play for a championship, they play for a championship and no one else gets affected.”
Though only four FBS independents remain—Notre Dame, Army, Connecticut and Massachusetts—the practice has a storied history in college football. As recently as 1996, major college football had double-digit independents; as recently as 1990, there were over 20.
To Kelly, such an arrangement would allow non-revenue sports to continue scheduling regionally independent of football’s money-driven machinations.
“Our sport’s different than everybody else—we only play once a week. Travel’s not a big deal for football, but it is a big deal for other sports. So that’s my theory,” Kelly said.
