LOS ANGELES — UCLA Bruins football coach Chip Kelly has never been afraid to speak his mind, and as a longtime coach in the Pac-12 conference - dating back to his time at Oregon over a decade ago - he shared his thoughts about the recent conference realignment moves and proposed a unique idea to help alleviate the stress these moves are causing for athletic departments.
“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.”
Locked on UCLA host Zachary Anderson-Yoxsimer reacted to Kelly's comments on Thursday's episode, discussing how beneficial this would be for non-football sports.
"All the other sports don't get stuck in the money grab that this is right now," Anderson-Yoxsimer said. "So they don't have to travel across the country for a baseball series and then come back and play a random Tuesday midweek game. And that's just a baseball example, what about a tennis match, or any other sport that's not football."
Football is a once per week event, making travel across the country not nearly as problematic as it might be for a baseball or tennis team.
These recent realignment moves, which resulted in the end of the Pac-12 as we know it, are all rooted in football money - yet many student-athletes in other sports are going to suffer with more travel time, less time in classes, less sleep, and likely reduced performance on the field thanks to increased travel and time zone changes.
While the powers that be will continue to do what they can to ensure more financial gain, people like Kelly are looking out for the many many other people impacted by conference realignment - even if the likelihood of changes like this getting implemented are pretty slim.