Ahead of UCLA's bowl game win over Boise State, Chip Kelly laid out a solution to all of the problems that college football and college athletics are facing. As noted by Pat McAfee, Kelly argued that college football should be in a different conference than the rest of the college's sports. He highlights the fact that Notre Dame is independent when it comes to football and the rest of their sports are in a conference.
When it comes to scheduling, Kelly says that there should be a 64-team conference with divisions. In those divisions are schools that are nearby your university. For example, the power-five West coast schools would be grouped together in one conference. Every division would play each other.
With the remaining four games left on the schedule, each program would play games against squads in other divisions. This would allow for interesting out-of-conference matchups. Finally, each Power Five program would play one game against a team in the lower division which would allow programs to still have a buy-game.
The coach also mentions that college athletes should be paid. While Kelly's proposal sounds like heaven, it is interesting to wonder whether his proposal is realistic.
Is Chip Kelly's proposal realistic for college football?
To be quite honest, the coach's proposal will probably not happen anytime soon. The landscape of college athletics is already in a terrible spot and will likely require a miracle in itself to fix. It is possible that this proposal happens five to ten years down the line but the NCAA and athletic directors are already committed to playing teams across the country for now.
Yes, it is unfair that the scheduling of college sports forces programs to play each other hundreds of miles away, but for now there is no easy way out.
When it comes to revenue sharing, it's hard to devise a system that allows players to get paid without violating Title IX. Recently, the NCAA came out with a system that pays women and men equally. As Kelly notes, the players deserve to get paid because they are the ones who are generating the revenue in the sport.