Chip Kelly Says 'NIL Defeats Weather' Before Taking Ohio State Job

Kelly may have tipped his hand before shocking UCLA departure

Chip Kelly’s decision to leave UCLA as its head coach and take over as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator is a curious one, to say the least.

It’s rare that a sitting head coach at a Power 5 school leaves for a coordinator job. It’s true that Kelly’s job as UCLA wasn’t exactly secure. But he survived the coaching carousels this offseason. In fact, hours before he took the Ohio State job, Boston College hired Bill O’Brien to be its head coach, supposedly closing the door on the carousel.

Now, there’s an open job, and at some point Kelly will have to explain why he made this move.

Perhaps he’s already answered the question.

John Canzano, a former Oregonian columnist who now hosts a radio show in Oregon, wrote a piece about Kelly’s departure and, among the revelations in the story was a three-word comment from Kelly on NIL and the weather.

"NIL defeats weather,” Canzano said Kelly told him in a recent conversation.

Yes, it gets cold in Columbus. But the Buckeyes have some of the best NIL support in the college game. Recently, THE Foundation, OSU’s official collective, raised $1 million for NIL efforts last month.

Ohio State is getting a coordinator who became a rising star while coordinating offenses at New Hampshire and at Oregon under then-coach Mike Bellotti, whom Kelly replaced as head coach.

Kelly is heading back to a familiar friend. He coached Ohio State head coach Ryan Day when Day was the quarterback at New Hampshire and Kelly was the team’s offensive coordinator in the late 1990s. Later, Day served as the tight ends coach at New Hampshire and served on the same staff as Kelly.

Kelly’s resume as a head coach featured an appearance in the BCS National Championship game with the Oregon Ducks in 2011, where they lost to the Auburn Tigers.

That was the high point of his head-coaching career. He parlayed his success at Oregon (46-7 record) in a job in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles. In four seasons in the NFL (three with Philadelphia and one with San Francisco), he went 28-35 and led the Eagles to one division title and playoff berth.

After leaving the NFL, he went back to the college ranks and UCLA, where he went 35-24 in six seasons before accepting the Ohio State job.