Chip Kelly advocates for eliminating conferences in football, keeping Olympic sports regional
Chip Kelly talked last Friday with Nick Aliotti and Yogi Roth about the collapse of the Pac-12. Oregon, the school Kelly helped turn into a national brand, is coming to the Big Ten in 2024. Same as Washington. Same as USC and UCLA.
The L.A. schools announcing their intention to leave over a year ago set everything in motion. Oregon and UW jumping off the ship last week — according to Arizona’s president — was the death blow. Don’t fault Kelly; he has another idea for how college football should be organized, and it looks a lot different from the way TV executives have reshaped it.
“I texted Nick about (how) I felt sad for the future of the Pac-12,” Kelly said Tuesday when he met with reporters. “That’s not what I grew up with, not what I was a part of. Talked to him, talked to Yogi Roth, the people who work for the Pac-12 Network, those are the people I felt bad for.”
The breakup of the Pac-12 was, to some extent, years in the making. Bad decision-making under the previous league commissioner destabilized the foundation. Over the last year, eight of the conference’s 12 teams have announced plans to leave in 2024, leaving behind the two Northern California schools — Cal and Stanford — and the two State schools in the Pacific Northwest — Oregon State and Washington State.
What becomes of that quartet remains to be seen. The ACC has reportedly held talks to explore the possibility of adding Cal and Stanford, but such a move would bring serious questions about the financial and logistical sense of adding two West Coast schools to an Atlantic Coast Conference.
In the latest round of realignment, geography (and the tradition that went with it) took a backseat to marketability.
The one team that has staunchly opposed advances from other leagues? Notre Dame. And the independent Fighting Irish plan to stay that way.
Kelly says they should be the model.
“I think there should be 64 teams and we should have no conferences. It should be one conference. But, no one asked my opinion so I’m gonna get ready for practice today,” Kelly said.
Asked if Cal and Stanford might follow to the Big Ten, Kelly then took his theory a step further.
“Yeah, and if we could get Arizona and Arizona State and Colorado and Utah to all come back, and then all of us are in one division, and we’re all together. Then all the other sports — which I think would be fair — stay in their conference,” he said. “Notre Dame is an independent in football but they’re in a conference for everything else. Why aren’t we all independent for football? Take the (69) teams in Power Five, make that one division. Take the (61) teams in Group of Five, make that another division. We play for a championship, they play for a championship. No one else gets affected.
“Our sport’s different from 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.
Concerns about the latest round of realignment’s impact on Olympic sports have been raised ever since USC and UCLA announced their move to the Big Ten. Those concerns have grown louder in recent months. University presidents and athletic directors are facing pointed questions about the prospect of cutting sports because of travel costs.
Some think football-only conference affiliations could offer a solution.
“Notre Dame is an independent in football and they’re in a conference in everything else and they made it work,” Kelly said. “And there are a lot smarter people that can figure all that stuff out. But put us all together geographically — the Oregons, the Washingtons, the NorCals, the SoCals, we’re in the West division. Figure it out.”