Florida athletic administrators kicked up their courting of former Oregon coach Chip Kelly into another gear when they got on a plane to New Hampshire on Sunday.
Sources say Florida didn’t offer Chip Kelly contract terms, but he likely wouldn’t have signed yet anyway
The UCLA job came open while the Gators were headed to meet with Kelly.
Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
Florida went up with a party — including athletic director Scott Stricklin and school president Kent Fuchs — to meet with Kelly. The UCLA job opened as they were en route, and a source close to the hiring process told SB Nation that interest in Kelly by UCLA is real, but that at this time there is no meeting scheduled between the Bruins and Kelly.
Multiple sources close to the hiring process between Kelly and Florida said that there is no offer or terms from UF on the table, and the sources also stated that the party who went to meet with Kelly did not have an assumption that they would come back with a deal signed for Kelly to be Florida’s next coach. Bringing Fuchs was simply part of Florida’s hiring process, per the sources.
But if they brought the president along with multiple notable administrators to Kelly, then anything short of Kelly’s signature would be a failure, right?
Consider the fact that Florida’s sent the cavalry to a coach’s home before, and come back without their man. This happened with Jim McElwain back in 2014. That became a public search which tracked multiple administrators’ journey from Florida to Colorado and literally to the doorstep of McElwain’s then-home.
“We’ve got a process we’re going through,” Florida AD Scott Stricklin told 247Sports upon arriving back in Florida Sunday night. “There will probably be some more productive conversations in the days ahead.”
The coaching carousel can make days seem like weeks, and weeks seem like months. Kelly took 10 days to make a decision on the Philadelphia Eagles job while he was at Oregon in 2013. There is also the context of when Florida has made head coaching hires in the past to take into account.
Kelly is by all accounts a very different dude both on the field and off.
Trying to put yourself in Chip Kelly’s shoes is an unfair thing to ask of anyone, because you probably can’t get into them. You’re not different enough, and you definitely don’t think the way he does.
This is why getting a read on what Kelly will do as the prized pony of this college football coaching carousel is something of an inexact science for those involved. Kelly will do what Kelly wants to do when Kelly wants to do it.
His scheme took spread principles to new heights, and off the field he was notable for things like pushing the boundaries of sports science that ran counter-culture to the NFL mold. He will take his time evaluating his personal situation and then move from there, but there is little incentive for Kelly to sign with Florida just yet.
He doesn’t seem motivated by money, and he’s still getting plenty of it from the San Francisco 49ers anyway. It’s more of a fit thing with him, and that takes time and vetting by all sides. There will also be other jobs in college football to open certainly, and should Kelly be moved by any of those it is in his best interest to wait for the regular season to end in order to hear those teams out.
Kelly’s offenses might have moved at a frenetic pace in both college and the pros, but when it comes to his future he will move at his own speed. It may defy conventional wisdom, but that’s the kind of guy Kelly is.
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