Chip Kelly agrees to 5-year deal to be new UCLA football coach

Chip Kelly will be the next head football coach of the UCLA Bruins and an announcement could be made by the end of the weekend.

The worst-kept secret in college football over the last six days was UCLA and Chip Kelly looked like a perfect fit, and now that pairing is expected to come to a reality with Kelly finalizing a deal to be the new coach of the Bruins. Kelly has reached an agreement with UCLA to be the Bruins new football coach, as was fires reported by Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times.

“It is an absolute honor to join the Bruin Family, and I am grateful to Chancellor Block and to Dan Guerrero for this incredible opportunity,” said Kelly in a press release. “UCLA is a world-class institution with a distinguished history in athletics, and we will do our part to uphold its tradition of excellence.”

According to Sports Illustrated’s Bruce Feldman, Kelly’s contract with UCLA is for five years and will pay him more than $4 million per year. That sum is much lower than I originally thought. I thought Kelly could command a salary that would make him one of the five highest-paid coaches in college football and get a salary north of $6 million. The $4 million sum would have made him the 20th highest paid coach in college, around the $4.1 paid to Butch Jones, the $4.2 paid to Bret Bielema, and the $4.45 million paid to Jim McElwain, all of whom were fired this year. Kelly is a relative bargain at this rate. There is also a reciprocal $9 million buyout.

Football Scoop and Yahoo reported the news on Friday that Kelly was no longer considering Florida and he was expected to pick UCLA and replace Jim Mora who was fired last Sunday, one day after losing again to rival USC.

On Saturday morning, it was reported on College GameDay that Kelly would not be appearing on ESPN and ESPN2 throughout the day as he normally does to provide analysis for games around the country. And now comes word from Pete Thamel who reports Kelly has picked UCLA and is finalizing the deal to be the Bruins new coach with an agreement expected by the end of the weekend.

This was the pairing that felt natural since Mora was fired last Sunday. While Florida is a great job, it just didn’t seem to fit with Kelly who coached in the Pac-12 during his time as the offensive coordinator and later as the head coach of the Oregon Ducks. He had success plucking the top talents out of the state of California and should be able to pick up where he left off when he was the game’s top offensive mind and should make UCLA a perennial Pac-12 contender and challenge for the College Football Playoff in two-three years once he starts to bring in his recruiting classes to remake the roster.

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Kelly has a 46-7 career record at Oregon, including an appearance in the BCS National Championship Game and finished in the top-five in three of his four seasons with the Ducks.