Chip Kelly advocates for NFL model of College Football, clarifies position on changing landscape

Chip Kelly has made his opinion known on modern college football. He wants there to be some kind of change and for it to be under the guidance of one person. A commissioner is how Kelly sees the sport excelling while bringing some alignment to it all.

While he personally has no interest in being the commissioner, Kelly does have plenty of ideas to pass along. One of those is bringing the power conferences together and coming up with a system, similar to the NFL. It’s a proven model and one that has dominated North American sports for years.

Kelly sees positives in mirroring the NFL on the field and off it, saying schools would be able to make even more money than what television networks are currently offering.

“I think if you use the NFL model, all of the Power Five schools are together,” Kelly said on Monday when making an appearance on ESPN. “The SEC, the Big Ten, the ACC, the Big 12, the former Pac-12 are one entity. Now, you can provide 32 games a week to the television resources and then what happened was — one league dissolved, the Pac-12, because they couldn’t come to a resolution on their TV contract.

“I think if you went as a group and all the schools banded together, I think you would be able to generate more money, and that would be able to sustain the other sports on your campuses. Then, we would just go with a division model. There is a West division, an East division, a North, a South, a Southeast, the Southwest. I think it would be good for football.”

For four seasons, Kelly was a head coach in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers. He took a jump to the NFL from Oregon before coming back to college and UCLA. Seeing how both work on a daily basis, Kelly wants college football to become more like the NFL.

Chip Kelly still considering other sports when backing NFL model

Football is king but athletic directors have other sports to worry about as well. Everyone wants to have success during the fall, making it the top priority. Kelly knows there is more to it than just football, though.

“Football drives the engine in terms of revenue,” Kelly said. “But there are other sports to consider. I think when people talk about travel and things like that — for football, it’s not a big deal because we only play 12 games a year. We’re going to play five away games. You’ve got a week between each game. So, travel is not a big deal for us. I think travel is a big deal for the other sports.”

Sports like basketball, teams can travel to two different locations in one week. Baseball and softball have midweek games and then weekend series. Travel needs begin to stack up on an athletic department and cash is needed to fund it all.

Kelly believes the NFL model can bring more money into college athletics and be a huge beneficiary for Olympic sports.

“When conference realignment happens, it’s because of TV dollars for football. But I don’t think the other sports were being considered. We have to have the revenue to support all the sports. I think for football, in general, we need a commissioner. We need a separate entity and we kind of need to follow the NFL model. They’ve done it. It’s not like I’m making anything up. I didn’t come up with a revolutionary idea. The NFL does it right now.”