UCLA coach Chip Kelly's radical college football plan

Status quo in college football has been dying for several years, and change within the sport -- from players' rights to conference affiliations -- never has been in more upheaval.

UCLA head coach Chip Kelly, his team having just thumped Boise State, has a plan.

One with enough detail in thought that Kelly even jokes about the time he's been spending on the question at the center of the sport: Where is college football going?

Conference realignment, NCAA Transfer Portal, Name, Image and Likeness? 

"I think they're all a problem and I think we need to have a conference commissioner," Kelly said. "I think football should be separate from other sports. Just the fact that our school is leaving to go to the Big Ten in football.

"Our softball team should be playing Arizona in softball. Our basketball team should be playing Arizona in basketball."

Kelly points to Notre Dame, the last traditional football power still standing without, by choice, a gridiron affiliation. 

"They say, 'Well, how can you do that?'," Kelly asked of football indepedence. "Well, Notre Dame is independent in football and they're in a conference in everything else.

"I think we should all be independent in football and you can have a 64-team conference in the Power 5 and you can have a 64-team conference in the Group of 5."

Kelly envisions a seven-game slate against natural opponents -- basically the Bruins' recent PAC-12 peers -- and rotating tilts against other geographically aligned institutions. 

"We separate it and we play each other," Kelly explained. "You can have the West Coast teams and every year we play seven games against the West Coast teams and then we play the East and play Syracuse, Boston College, Pitt, West Virginia, Virginia.

"Then the next year you play against the South while you still play your seven teams. You can play a seven-game schedule and play four against another division opponent. And you can always play against one Mountain West opponent every year so that we can keep those rivalries going."

Kelly envisions a national TV contract -- he doesn't say it but very similar to the NFL's approach -- that also affords opportunities to sell sponsorships and creates a pathway to "revenue-sharing" for paying players. 

"Not that I've really thought about this, not that I've spent a lot of time but i think if you went together collective as a group and said there's 132 teams and we all share the same TV contract, so that the Mountain West doesn't have one and the SunBelt has another and the SEC has one, that we all go together," Kelly said. "That's a lot of games and there's a lot of people in the tv world that would go through it. 

"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. You can do a lot of things.

"But I think we still do the same thing and take all that money, and I would do this, I think this needs to be done: that money now needs to be shared with the student-athletes and there needs to be revenue-sharing and the players should be paid and you can get rid of (NIL). And the schools should be paying the players because the players are what the product is and the fact that they don't get paid is really the biggest travesty."

Kelly's Bruins just closed their 2023 season Saturday night with a resounding, 35-22 win against Boise State, outscoring the Broncos 28-6 in the second half.