UCLA Football: Did Assistant Basketball Coach Troll Chip Kelly With Social Media Post?
Chip Kelly had his usual media scrum on Wednesday ahead of this weekend's game versus Arizona State.
Much of the presser involved the ho-hum questioning, with nothing one would rationally construe as out-of-line or merely challenging.
David Woods of BruinReportOnline asked Kelly about Men of Westwood -- an NIL collective aimed to help UCLA athletics. UCLA Basketball Mick Cronin and his staff have been promoting the collective publicly for quite some time now (largely in the form of wearing MoW t-shirts). Per the video below (starting at the 5:50 mark), Woods asked the following question:
"How much do you think it's incumbent on the head coach or the just the staff in general to help raise the profile of NIL collectives like Men of Westwood?"
Kelly offered up the following response:
"I think it’s all incumbent on everybody. You talk about it all the time and you try to reach out to people to contribute to it. But, you can’t make someone contribute to it that doesn’t want to contribute to it. That’s the same thing, it’s no different than (Senior Associate Athletic Director) Josh Rebholz’s job of trying to raise money for the university, for facilities, scholarships and things like that. That’s just the nature of college athletics right now."
When asked further about Cronin's involvement in promoting the collective, and whether Kelly would indeed do the same thing in the future, he offered the thoughts below (per Gavin Carlson of the Daily Bruin/the video above).
Kelly went on to speak about the academic profile of his team, in addition to enforcing the 'books and ball' mantra he's been preaching since taking the job at UCLA. In Kelly's words (per the video above), "These guys are all about book and ball. We have 22 kids who are in grad school right now. We have a 3.3 GPA. We’re playing football at a really, really high level and I think that’s what people get more proud of than is a guy wearing a t-shirt or not.”
Cronin has been a hugely successful and popular ambassador of the program -- and frankly the university as a whole. He's an objectively gregarious personality who isn't shy in tackling various media responsibilities -- whether it be radio interviews, in-person interviews, podcast appearances, or video commitments. Kelly appears to be a bit more introverted with regard to the media, and there's nothing wrong with that.
With that said, some in the fan base have grown a bit disgruntled at the dichotomy present between both coaches. One is seemingly making any and all efforts to promote the program -- and in the process raise money for NIL in this ever-changing athletics landscape. On the other side, you have a coach who is seemingly a bit archaic in terms of the process, and perhaps even reticent at the same time to go the same lengths as his peer.
Again -- this is more an observation rather than a tangible fact. It would be patently unfair to specifically claim Kelly isn't doing his job in the NIL universe without actual proof. At the same time, optics in this specific situation are significant to the health of an athletics program -- especially the football team.
Interestingly enough, hours after Kelly's interview came out, longtime Cronin assistant coach/current UCLA assistant coach Darren Savino took to X (formerly Twitter) and offered this post. Read into it what you will. Is this post merely coincidental...or did it have some type of underlying meaning behind it?
247Sports publisher Jason Scheer certainly had a clear opinion on the matter (as shown below).
With rumors that the NIL funding in regard to UCLA Football is struggling, these statements from Kelly don't exactly assuage concerns from those in the fan base.
Conversely, when you look at how successful Cronin has been with on-the-court achievement and in the realm of recruiting, maybe there's something to the notion that promoting with the goal of raising funds is actually the way to go when trying to climb toward the pinnacle of the sport.
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