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Kyle Bonagura, ESPN Staff Writer
LAS VEGAS — UCLA‘s final season in the Pac-12 will be a bittersweet one for coach Chip Kelly.
“I’m so affectionate towards the conference and have so many good friends here,” Kelly told ESPN at Pac-12 media day. “The Pac-12 is a special place, but it was one of those deals … I found out [UCLA was leaving] two hours before it was going to happen.”
Between his time at Oregon and UCLA, Kelly has spent 11 years coaching in the conference and acknowledged conference realignment is just part of the sport.
“You understand it and I think even the league understands it,” Kelly said. “And I’ll credit [commissioner] George [Kliavkoff] and [associate commissioner] Merton Hanks have been great to me and to our team. They’re classy as heck, but it’s just the world we live in in college football. It’s driven by money. Whatever the money is, people are incentivizing it enough to make it where you would never think you would do it, but then you find out [the media rights distribution is] probably twice what you get in the other league and you’re like, ‘OK.'”
USC coach Lincoln Riley expressed a similar sentiment, despite having spent just one year in the conference.
“When I made the decision to come coach at USC, it was to come coach [in the Pac-12],” he said. “In a short time, been able to make and create great relationships within this conference, whether it’s the other coaches, the other schools, the administrators here, getting to play at the different venues.”
Both schools will begin play in the Big Ten next season, after announcing they would leave last summer.
“Is there excitement to go into the Big Ten? Absolutely there is, right?” Riley said. “This is not a battle between good and evil, right? It’s not that there’s one right answer. Pac-12 is a tremendous conference. I think it’s set up for a tremendous year. Obviously, we’re excited to be a part of it this year. Hopefully our last year goes really, really well.”
USC’s last conference title came in 2017 and UCLA’s was in 1998.
“It means a lot to be the last year in the Pac-12,” UCLA offensive lineman Duke Clemens told ESPN. “It would be huge to win the conference. Not just for our team I guess, but for the program and a good way to send us off into the Big Ten.”
Both schools have been members of the conference dating back to the 1920s, when it was known as the Pacific Coast Conference, and have been tentpole members ever since.