Chip Kelly reacts to proposed rule changes to speed up college football games

UCLA head coach Chip Kelly innovated college football with his up-tempo, spread offense. The impact of his teams at Oregon might not have been the same with the NCAA’s new rules.

Division I and Division II games will no longer feature the clock stopping after a first down. It will be a running clock, except for the final two minutes of each half.

“I understand what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to shorten the game,” Kelly said after Tuesday’s spring practice for the Bruins. “That’s one way to do it. I think there’s gonna be less plays in a a game so less offense in the game. I don’t think they really know what they’ll have until you actually see it implemented. I understand the genesis of it. I couldn’t comment on it because we haven’t done it yet.”

Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said back in March that they felt like the rule changes were going to be very minimal in terms of how it impacts the game.

Kelly, who seems to have no qualms about it, seems to agree.

“Obviously, it will stop in the last two minutes, which is how everybody’s run their two minute drill knowing that a first down will stop the clock until the chains are set and then you go again,” Kelly said. “In the NFL, they do it but they don’t stop it at all. They don’t even stop in a two minute situation. It’s kind of a hybrid rule. So we’ll see. I don’t have a feeling one way or another, positive or negative.”

Chip Kelly assumes TV is the reason for the rule change

Chip Kelly was asked who he think prompted the rule change and he had a very direct indirect answer to the question.

In the end, it led to him answering his own hypothetical question.

“Chase the money,” Kelly said. “I don’t know who feels like games are too long. Sometimes I think people think coaches have a real big effect on some of these little changes and some of them we don’t have really anything to do with them. They must have gone on to somewhere someone remarked that are too long, so they’re gonna change it. I would imagine that it had something to do with the television part of the game. From my understanding Division III, which isn’t really on television, didn’t change their rules so hard. So I imagine that it’s television generated.”