Chip Kelly reaches big bonus with win over Colorado

Following UCLA’s 28-16 win over Colorado, head coach Chip Kelly got a nice bonus as stated in his contract.

With the win, UCLA improved to 6-2 on the season, making the Bruins bowl eligible once again. With that, Kelly got a six-figure bonus. 

Getting the win, plus a bowl game appearance, gave Kelly a substantial bonus with four games left in the regular season.

“UCLA coach Chip Kelly set for $125,000 in bonuses as Bruins get 6th win of the season and become eligible for bowl game by beating Colorado,” USA Today’s Steve Berkowitz wrote on Twitter. “He’ll get $25K for 6th regular season win. He’ll get at least $100,000 for a bowl appearance.”

Kelly, 59, is 33-31 at UCLA since 2018 when he returned to the college game. He had to rebuild a Bruins program down in the dumps and finally turned it around in 2021.

He went 8-4 that season and followed it up with a 9-4 season last year, including a Sun Bowl appearance and No. 21 ranking in the final AP Poll.

Kelly is 79-38 as a college head coach with UCLA and Oregon. The future looks bright with five-star quarterback Dante Moore getting experience as a true freshman and UCLA moving onto the Big Ten starting in 2024.

In the present day, Kelly’s team won by two scores despite turning the ball over four times. A definite sign of fight from the Bruins.

“It’s the square root of pi – so take the square root of 3.1416, we’re good,” Kelly said. “Usually you don’t win football games when you have four turnovers and in the first half. It was 7-6 at halftime and we had a one-point lead. But that is how well our defense played tonight. And I thought our defense was outstanding. We knew what a passing attack they had and how dynamic they were, not only at quarterback but at receiver. For our guys to be able to contain Shedeur [Sanders] like that, and no one really has, that’s a credit to them. 

“But I also want to give credit to Shedeur. He’s a tough kid. I mean, he got hit and he kept balling, so it was a good battle. We are glad, we are fortunate that we came out on top. We need to clean up a lot, offensively. I thought that the drive at the beginning of the second half was key – just getting us back into the game and get the momentum back on our side. But we’re never going to apologize when we win a football game.”

There was a lack of buzz surrounding UCLA in the shadow of USC and other Pac-12 programs before Kelly came in. Since then, after some patience of course, UCLA became a perennial top-25 team over the last two seasons.

“It was awesome,” Kelly said of the Rose Bowl atmosphere Saturday night. “And I think the combination of that and I think that the people that were around yesterday and knew what happened when they put up Coach Donahue’s statue. I think it was fitting and, you know, I think that Terry was watching today, and Terry was the ultimate gutty little Bruin and I think that’s what our players did today. And Terry had a big stamp on this win today.”