Chip Kelly shares details of B1G's scheduling plan for UCLA
The B1G’s expansion to the West Coast by adding Pac-12 teams, starting with USC and UCLA and now expected to include Oregon and Washington, has raised many questions about how coast-to-coast travel and scheduling will be handled. Chip Kelly offered some insight Friday when it comes to the conference’s football scheduling.
Kelly told Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times that the Bruins won’t be dealing with any early kickoffs when they travel east to face B1G teams. The UCLA head coach suggested his squad will likely be playing many 3:30 ET games. It’s interesting to note that FOX, one of the B1G’s primary TV partners, features its game of the week with a noon ET kickoff.
Chip Kelly on Big Ten travel: “We won’t play any games before 12:30 our time, so that would be a 3:30 kick, so we’ll stay on our same time schedule because we would leave Friday, play a game–which would be noon for us, 3 for them–Saturday and [come back].”
— Ben Bolch (@latbbolch) August 4, 2023
UCLA had been scheduled to travel to Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Rutgers in 2024 with trips to Illinois, Michigan State, Nebraska, Penn State and USC in 2025. The schedules, however, are expected to change with the B1G’s reported additions of Oregon and Washington.