Chip Kelly is Officially on the Clock

UCLA's move to the Big Ten means Kelly is running out of time.

Chip Kelly has to have a great 2022 season to have any hope of continuing on as UCLA head coach. (Photo credit: Don Liebig/ASUCLA, uclabruins.com)

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I’ve hinted at it a few times since the news broke last month that UCLA and Southern Cal were leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten, but it’s time to break the seal and dive into this.

Folks, this move is bad news for Chip Kelly.

Let’s start with a basic premise: UCLA’s move to the Big Ten was done to ensure the financial security of the athletic department going forward. By moving to the Big Ten, UCLA is guaranteeing itself tens of millions of dollars more in its next media rights contract, which will allow it to pay off the massive debt run up under former AD Dan Guerrero while remaining competitive in all athletic events.

And what is driving that giant media contract UCLA will get with the Big Ten?

Football.

I don’t think it is controversial at this point to say that football is driving the bus in college athletics at this point. This should not be shocking: sports, in general, is the last true bastion of live television, and football in particular commands audiences that every other sport can only dream of. Regular NFL programming held three of the top four spots on television last year, while college football saw more than its share of large ratings - only two weeks last year did not feature at least one game that had over five million viewers, and four games topped the 10 million mark. Even College Gameday, ESPN’s early morning studio show, managed to average two million viewers a few times this past year.

Those large ratings mean large payouts as conferences jockey to add as much content to their portfolio, and the Big Ten already has one of the largest portfolios in the country; 20 games featuring Big Ten teams topped over four million viewers, with Michigan versus Ohio State taking the top spot with the largest audience for a non-conference championship game. By adding the two Los Angeles schools into their portfolio, the Big Ten is now positioned to be one of the two main content providers moving forward.

Content, and football, are king.

So what does this all have to do with Chip Kelly?

It’s a pretty simple premise. Football is driving everything, which means the football program will come under increased scrutiny as part of this move to the Big Ten. This means Chip Kelly is now under the microscope.

The quick and dirty analysis of the Chip Kelly era at UCLA is not good. In four years, Kelly has amassed an abysmal 18-25 record. The 2021 season was a notable improvement on the previous three, as UCLA finished with an 8-4 record, but even that comes with an asterisk as the Bruins did not defeat a single team that finished the year with a winning record. Things get worse when you look under the hood and realize that the Bruins have only placed one recruiting class in the top 20 of the 247 rankings under Kelly and that it happened to be his initial class featuring many holdovers from the Jim Mora era.

Sometimes I think back to those initial days in 2017 when we were at Bruinsnation and I was having to update the old Coaching Hot Board multiple times a day as reports came out regarding what Chip Kelly was going to do. Remember: Kelly was choosing between two openings, as he was also meeting with representatives from the University of Florida regarding their own football opening. When it was finally reported that Kelly had chosen UCLA, it was seen as a huge victory for the athletic department. Florida would instead pivot to Dan Mullen.

I think back to those days because, in hindsight, it has become increasingly obvious that Chip Kelly chose UCLA over Florida because UCLA under Dan Guerrero would be more willing to put up with his failures. Consider that Florida fired Dan Mullen this past year despite putting up a 34-15 record over his four years, including three New Years Six bowl appearances and an SEC East title. Mullen’s recruiting rankings were also much higher than Kelly has ever gotten at UCLA. Yet at Florida, Mullen’s successes were not enough to protect him when the rot under the surface started to reveal itself. If Kelly had chosen Florida, he would have been run out of Gainesville after two seasons.

But at UCLA, he was walking into a football culture that was going to be patient, or more accurately, did not have the same top-down investment in football as he would potentially see in Florida. At UCLA, he would have Dan Guerrero, a patient and hands-off manager who would only act when forced to. At UCLA, he would not have to deal with a high-end donor base that demands results. At UCLA, he’s not even the biggest name on campus; that spot belongs to the head coach of the men’s basketball program (and for those keeping track at home, Kelly should thank his lucky stars that Mick Cronin has paid off, as his success has distracted donors from his failures).

At UCLA, Kelly had the makings of a perfect situation where he did not have to worry about results.

Except that’s the fun thing about life: eventually it will throw you a curveball, and the past few years have been a series of curveballs for Kelly. The NIL era has led to greater recruiting scrutiny, especially as UCLA offers fewer and fewer high school recruits, a knock-on of Kelly’s seeming inability to care about competing for top-end talent. The transfer portal has been a boon for UCLA in papering over those issues, but it creates a higher degree of difficulty and gives the coaching staff less leeway if they miss on a player, and NIL has made it harder to secure top transfer talent like the Bruins had been able to in previous years. Southern Cal, which had been relegated to mediocrity in recent years, went out and hired one of the biggest and most successful coaches out there in Lincoln Riley; the jury is currently out on whether Riley will be able to turn around the traditional power, but it is hard to bet against the Trojans when they are doing so many things right at the moment.

And now the move to the Big Ten, which represents an improvement in competition, sure, but also represents a sizeable improvement in the financials that UCLA will be able to wield going forward. These financials will improve all of the athletic department, to be sure, but football is again the driving force, so it stands to reason a good chunk of this new budget will go towards the football program. It is the latest in a recent string of signs that UCLA finally recognizes that a healthy and strong football program is the most important facet of a modern Power Five athletic department.

I need to stress how big this media rights deal is going to be. The Athletic had a recent story discussing where negotiations were at, with a few bombshells, the biggest being that ESPN was out of the running for a slice of the Big Ten pie. Fox will be the main carrier, which makes sense as the network is a co-owner of the Big Ten Network, but CBS and NBC will also be spending a pretty penny to have access. The current idea would have Fox taking the best Big Ten game in their Big Noon Saturday timeslot, followed by CBS putting a game where they previously had the SEC Game of the Week (ESPN recently paid to gain exclusive rights to the SEC). NBC then would follow with a primetime game, with extra games potentially filtering to later on Fox, FS1, and streaming services like Peacock. Both CBS and NBC are reportedly paying $350 million a year for these games - ESPN pulled out after trying a seven-year offer for $380 million a year with access to multiple games. This is going to be an extremely-lucrative media deal, which means UCLA will have easy access to that money starting in 2024.

For Chip Kelly, this is not good news. As we’ve mentioned many times in the past, Kelly’s UCLA tenure has been anything but an unqualified success, and his most recent record of 8-4 represented the first winning season he’s had in four seasons in Westwood (and even that comes with caveats regarding the strength of the Bruins schedule). That lack of success led to a fascinating standoff this last offseason, with Kelly floating his name out for various jobs while trying to negotiate a new contract extension. Martin Jarmond did not budge, and the eventual extension he did sign - which, let’s be honest, he was always going to sign an extension - but he signed for a smaller base salary and a decreased buyout. According to Ben Bolch of the LA Times, the buyout to let go of Kelly following this season is down to a measly $4.06 million, relatively chump change in today’s coaching economy.

The switch to the Big Ten, and all the money that move affords UCLA, means that the Bruins don’t have to wait out a coach that is not working out anymore. The Bruins should again have a successful football season this year thanks to an aggressively weak schedule, but anything less than 9-3 should be seen as a disappointment, and if the Bruins regress down to 6-6 or even 7-5, I have to imagine Jarmond will not hesitate to pull the trigger and end the Chip Kelly era. It’s not like UCLA will lack qualified candidates going forward, thanks to that shiny new Big Ten money and location in Southern California. Getting someone like Dave Aranda and paying them the market rate is something UCLA could very easily do going forward.

Chip Kelly suddenly finds himself in a situation where he has to produce high-end results, and I’m not sure if he either knows that is the case or is capable of producing them anymore.

Either way, tick tock.

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