UCLA Football is in a Limbo of Its Own Making
Everyone involved with this has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they have no business making decisions on the future of UCLA football going forward.
I feel like I’ve been writing some version of this article for years now. UCLA football finds some new low, I wonder how everyone involved can continue the charade, and then things just magically continue. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, and yet clearly those people have never experienced UCLA football in the recent decade.
And yet, I think we are finally nearing the endpoint. Numerous reporters have indicated that Chip Kelly is not only interested in returning to the NFL as an offensive coordinator but has been actively interviewing for the past week. Many of these reports have centered around the potential job status of Dan Quinn, with whom Kelly was heavily linked and ultimately took the Washington Commanders job on Thursday, but Ian Rapoport reported that Kelly interviewed multiple times with the Las Vegas Raiders about their potential opening.
At this point, it feels pretty clear that Chip Kelly does not want to be at UCLA going forward. It is one thing to have people be interested in you for a job or to have some level of interest in taking a different job in the future. It is quite another to actively interview with multiple NFL teams when you are a head coach and have to try and sell that you are fully committed to the team when you do not get said jobs. It isn’t like Kelly has any plausible deniability on this topic - NFL teams have no reason to lie about conducting interviews with potential coaches. But I do not know how Kelly is supposed to continue as UCLA’s head coach moving forward. The fanbase, which was already not fully behind him, deserves better than to be held hostage by a coach who has a foot out the door already.
There’s going to be a media narrative when Chip Kelly eventually leaves UCLA that the school did not provide the required support to win at the highest level. Nothing could be further from the truth - the failures of the Chip Kelly era are entirely of his own making. No one forced Kelly to keep his friend Jerry Azzinaro employed as defensive coordinator for four years, thus wasting a fantastic offensive attack in the process. No one forced Kelly to tear the program down to the studs, just as no one forced him to be hyper-selective and lazy in his recruiting, leaving UCLA with scraps compared to the programs around it. No one benefitted more from the opening of the transfer portal, which made things look more structurally sound than they were, and no one was hurt more by NIL, or specifically a complete failure to understand how important NIL would be to modern talent acquisition. All of this is Kelly’s doing, and if there is a lesson that the media should take from his time at UCLA, it is that he is wholly incapable of running and managing a roster in the modern era of football. He’s a bright offensive mind, perhaps one of the best around still, but letting him have control over any other aspect of a football team is a folly of the highest degree.
And yet I also cannot completely blame him for the current situation. After all, who amongst us has not looked at the burning wreckage of a job surrounding them and decided it was time to move on? I will also point out that Chip Kelly is under no obligation to just quit his job and move on if an NFL opening does not materialize for him. If you had $6 million on the table for doing absolutely nothing, would you walk away from it? For Kelly, even staying at UCLA for one more season (and let’s be clear here: it would be for only one more season no matter what he does in that season) is not the worst result in the world. Yes, his reputation would take a hit as UCLA would likely not be very good and he would have to suffer the indignity of being fired again, but I do not think it would take him more than a year to find a coordinator job if he wanted one. Such is life as a coach once you get to a certain level in the industry.
I also completely understand why he would want to be done with college football entirely. It’s a pretty open secret now that the current situation in college football is untenable in the long term. NIL is wrecking some level of havoc, though it is mostly acting to bring a system that already existed below the surface into the light. The Transfer Portal has been a bigger problem for coaches, especially the times that it is open, which created a ridiculous calendar. Case-in-point:
December: Regular Season ends.
December 4: Transfer Portal opens, and will remain open until Jan. 2.
December 20: Early Signing Day for high schoolers
Also in December: Bowl games, where players in the transfer portal may or may not play for their former teams.
Throw in the amount of extra work coaches now have to do to re-recruit players they already have on the roster and work with donors to get a functioning NIL operation running, and the grind of being a college coach is becoming untenable for most. This will likely change in the future - for example, the NCAA is seemingly acknowledging an employment system of some kind is on the horizon - but if you’re a coach like Chip Kelly who already did not care all that much about recruiting in the first place, the current situation has to be anathema to him.
No, Kelly does not take all of the blame for this one. Much credit must also go to UCLA Athletic Director Martin Jarmond, who told UCLA fans to “read the room” but has proven to be functionally illiterate when it comes to the football program. Jarmond could not have misread the situation with the prime money-maker for his department more than he did, and the level of incompetence he has shown in this entire process should disqualify him from having any say over who will be the next UCLA head coach. To be fair, he is not the first UCLA athletic director who was lulled into keeping a coach past their expiration date just because they managed a victory over Southern Cal, but the level of tone-deafness on display has been truly stunning, and indicative of an athletic director who is in over his head. UCLA fans would love some transparency on this issue, and yet they’re met with silence; reportedly, mid-level donors have had the same issues in getting straight answers.
There’s always a saying that athletic directors are tied to the coaches they hire, but Jarmond has managed to tie himself to a coach he did not hire in the worst way possible. The common refrain from most observers when Jarmond signed Kelly to an extension was that it was done to make it easier and cheaper to move on from Kelly should the need arise. The problem is that this only works if you ACTUALLY MOVE ON FROM THE GUY. By refusing to do so, the extension simply becomes…an extension, one that will pay Chip Kelly regardless of whether he wants to be here or not. Jarmond is now tied to Kelly, and the destruction of the program under Kelly’s watch is now fully owned by Jarmond as well.
Let’s quickly rapid-fire a few other individuals who deserve some blame for this situation:
Casey Wasserman (and by extension, the other big whale donors), whose public comments following the Arizona State debacle revealed he was completely divorced from the reality of what UCLA football currently is and its place in college football under Chip Kelly.
Chancellor Gene Block, who is rumored to have blocked a potential firing of Kelly so soon before he officially retired and has generally not been fully supportive of athletics in the way that other schools are. You can argue that UCLA does not need successful athletics in the way that the University of Alabama does given it does not struggle for applicants, but Michigan is showing that even schools at the high end of academic achievement can be successful in both arenas.
The people behind the “Fire Chip Kelly!” banners, who fell into the classic UCLA trap of flying a banner during turbulent times, causing the athletic department to dig in its heels on the issue. I don’t think a banner campaign has ever worked for UCLA before, but maybe it will work next time!
If there is any takeaway from this entire debacle, it’s that Chip Kelly’s days as UCLA head coach are numbered. That number could be a matter of hours, days, or even months, but UCLA will be making a change at some point in the future. The problem is that this change should have been made months, if not years, ago, and UCLA is stuck in a no-win situation because of the ineptitude of many. It’s hard to feel too confident in the future, but it’s also hard to believe things could get worse.
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After listening to and watching all of the discussions on the internet this past week, with this perfect analysis of the situation what more needs to be said? Now... I kinda liked the banner. For me, an emotional release at that time that negated me doing harm to myself or others!
They should be flying that "Fire Chip Kelly and Martin Jarmond" banner over Westwood every day! I don't agree with Dimitri that the Chipster (OG) is "a bright offensive mind, perhaps one of the best around". I think this is a fallacy based on past experience. He may HAVE BEEN a brilliant offensive mind back in his DUCK DAYS, but clearly not now, nor has he been for some time. The Chipster (OG) is simply a bad coach (at any level or category). I do agree that if the Chipster (OG) belongs anywhere, it would be in the NFL where you only have to draft or trade, not recruit.
As for Martin Jarmond, he should have been fired right after he decided to retain Kelly for his final contractual year. In truth, he should have been let go shortly after he was hired. It was a bad hire.
If Kelly does leave for the NFL (let's hope he does), this will put Jarmond and UCLA football in a tough spot. They would then have to get another coach in there during a period where you have a lame duck Chancellor and not many (if any at all) decent candidates to select from. Chances are they would promote an assistant to be a temporary coach until the next season ends (most likely mercifully). As for the Chipster (OG), he has already imploded the program so he'd care less about what the state of the program would be in if he leaves. This is all on Jarmond, just a horrible AD, no, not as bad as Donut Dan, but very close. Let's hope the new Chancellor has the "smarts" to let go of Jarmond and put someone in their who knows how to run a big-time major college Athletic program, yes even in this age of NIL, the portal and all the changes in the college athletic landscape.