UCLA’s Chip Kelly Pitches Unorthodox Realignment Idea Inspired by Notre Dame

Now this is independent thinking.

The UCLA that Chip Kelly began coaching in 2018 was very different than the UCLA he will one day leave.

A few short years ago, the Bruins were members of a stable 12-team league filled with traditional rivals such as USC, California and Stanford.

Starting next year, however, UCLA will play football in a Big Ten chock-full of unfamiliar foes as the Pac-12 passes into the history books. With conference realignment at a flashpoint, Kelly proposed a unique idea Tuesday to stop the madness.

“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.”

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Though only four FBS independents remain—Notre Dame, Army, Connecticut and Massachusetts—the practice has a storied history in college football. As recently as 1996, major college football had double-digit independents; as recently as 1990, there were over 20.

To Kelly, such an arrangement would allow non-revenue sports to continue scheduling regionally independent of football’s money-driven machinations.

“Our sport’s different than 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. So that’s my theory,” Kelly said.