Could Chip Kelly’s single Power Five conference idea work? | College Football Enquirer
Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel and Ross Dellenger, and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde discuss the UCLA head coach’s radical ideal to separate football from other collegiate sports and form a 64-team Power Five conference. Hear the full conversation on the “College Football Enquirer” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
DAN WETZEL: Kelly, after the LA Bowl, after they beat Boise, talked about how sad he was the Pac-12 is departing. Although Washington State and Oregon State now control the Pac-2. They won their ruling.
Kelly said we should just all be independent in football. There should be no conferences for football. Football should be separated. Everyone should be independent.
You can have a 64-team conference. That's the Power Five. You can have a 64-team conference. That's the group of five. We separate it. They still play each other. Two different television contracts. Everybody shares an equal amount of the revenue.
ROSS DELLENGER: I think this idea from Chip Kelly's great. I would love to see it happen. It would probably fix a lot of things. It's also probably in violation of federal law. Right?
Like Congress would have to help in some way, which we've talked about on the pod a lot. Probably too much. But the wheels are in motion. And I think there is something over the next couple months going to come from Congress.
I feel more optimistic than ever. I don't know exactly what it will be but the wheels are in motion. They're going to have to do something because every solution I think, most of every solution-- except for full out employment-- most of every solution is going to come with some kind of-- need some kind of help from Congress.
PART FORDE: Yeah. Chip Kelly is a smart guy who's got a lot of smart ideas. And this is a smart idea except there was one little clause in there that Dan read, which is why it would not happen. Everybody shares equally on the revenue.
That would require people from the Big Ten and the SEC to share equally with people from the Big 12 and the ACC and they ain't going to do that. It would require sacrifice and teamwork and those are two things that are completely foreign to college football right now.
DAN WETZEL: College football is not big on academics, sacrifice, teamwork, or patience, except when talking to the players.