UCLA’s Kelly supporters for single P5 conference

• Paolo Uggetti, ESPNDec 17, 2023, 01:57 AM ET

In a press conference ahead of UCLA’s LA Bowl win over Boise State on Friday, head coach Chip Kelly called for a total revamping of college football’s structure following the forthcoming dissolution of the Pac-12.

“It’s unfortunate,” Kelly stated. “The truth that there’s not going to be a Pac-12 next year, the truth that Washington State is not going to be [in] a conference next year, the fact that Oregon State is not going to be in a conference next year, we failed.”

Kelly’s service includes establishing a conference commissioner and having football break away from other sports, something he has promoted for in the past. As conferences like the Big 10, SEC, Big 12 and ACC keep adding groups from, in some cases, both coasts, Kelly’s ideal situation is for a version of independence that results in consolidation.

“I believe we must all be independent in football,” Kelly said. “You can have a 64-team conference that’s in the Power 5 and you can have a 64-team conference in the Group of 5, and we separate it and we play each other.”

Kelly said that he believes there must be one television contract that consists of every conference, where potential regional divisions are sponsored by brands and the overall media offering is stronger and more enticing to possible television partners.

“That’s a lot of games and there’s a lot of individuals in the TV world that would go through it,” Kelly said. “You can sponsor each one. Instead of calling it Group of 5 and Power 5, you can call it Amazon, Nike, bid that out to things.”

Beyond the branding of said conferences and divisions, Kelly even discussed how he believes the scheduling might work in this brand-new format in order to retain competitions while also creating brand-new ones.

“You can have the West Coast groups and then every year, we play 7 games versus the West Coast teams, and after that we play the East,” Kelly stated. “So we play Syracuse, Boston College, Pitt, West Virginia, Virginia. Then, the next year, you bet the South while you still play your seven groups. You can play a seven-game schedule, you can play 4 versus another department opponent and you can always play against one Mountain group every year so that we can still keep those rivalries going.”

And in what was possibly the staunchest point of his response, Kelly also required income sharing in between schools and players which, in his mind, would minimize a lot of the murkiness that name, image and likeness has brought to the sport recently.

“The players must make money and you can get rid of [NIL] and the schools should be paying the players because the players are what the item is,” Kelly said. “And the reality that they don’t earn money is, really, the most significant travesty.”