Plaschke: In leaving UCLA, Chip Kelly runs a selfish sneak


Football coach Chip Kelly is leaving UCLA to become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

For the final play of his sorry UCLA tenure, Chip Kelly finally ran something that fooled somebody.

A cowardly reverse.

Less than three months after the UCLA administration publicly embraced him, he flipped them off.

Less than three months after the UCLA players beat USC in his honor, he walked out on them.

Less than three months after praising his team for its resilient spirit in a comeback bowl victory over Boise State, he fled from the fight.

Look, this has to be some sort of sick joke, no?

Read more: Chip Kelly leaves UCLA to become Ohio State’s offensive coordinator

Chip Kelly is really leaving the UCLA head coaching job at the worst possible time to become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State?

Not the NFL. Not another head coaching job in college. But a coordinator at one of UCLA’s future Big Ten rivals? He took a demotion in title to work at a lesser position for a school in the same league?

And he’s doing it now?

He’s doing it at such an unconscionably late date that most of the recruits had been signed, and many of the top transfers were gone, and now UCLA has essentially lost an entire season?

Classy. Professional. Disgusting.

I told UCLA to fire him. I begged UCLA to fire him. At the end of the season I wrote a column saying that UCLA had to fire him.

He had gone 35-34 in six seasons with one bowl win. He wasn’t interested in recruiting, as his current class was ranked 58th nationally by 247Sports.com. He wasn’t interested in schmoozing, as he generated little NIL money and few friends among the boosters.

He should have been fired long before he could pull this selfish stunt, long before his lame opportunism turned the program into steaming wreckage, long before now.

But no,…


Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/plaschke-leaving-ucla-chip-kelly-010201881.html

Author : LA Times

Publish date : 2024-02-10 01:02:01

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