Chip Kelly discusses impact of move to Big Ten on UCLA recruiting

Chip Kelly’s UCLA squad is a year away from joining the Big Ten, but the Bruins are already talking B1G on the recruiting trail.

“It comes up then because you’re recruiting kids that are in Class of ’24 and ’25 that they’re not going to play a Pac-12 schedule,” Kelly told reporters at Pac-12 Media Day on Friday in Las Vegas. “So it comes up in those conversations.”

Kelly pointed specifically to the recruitment of Class of 2023 QB Dante Moore. The opportunity to play against B1G opponents appealed to the 5-star prospect from Detroit.

“We talked about that, he’s from the Midwest and always wanted to play in the Big Ten,” Kelly said of recruiting Moore. “He’s going to get an opportunity to play in the Big Ten. He’ll play one year in the Pac-12 and another there.”

Kelly expects that playing teams in the Midwest with more favorable kickoff times for national audiences will benefit UCLA’s recruiting, but the Bruins won’t forget about the talent pool surrounding the Los Angeles area.

“You’re playing on CBS, NBC, FOX. You’re not going to play a game later than 8 o’clock on the East Coast because of the time slots that the Big Ten has. So their exposure to be shown to more of the country is a positive,” Kelly told reporters. “So I think that has happened. We have had conversations with kids from the Midwest.

“But I still think your recruiting base is going to be somewhere within drivable distance to your campus. There’s always exceptions. There’s not a hard and fast rule, but I think the kids in California are excited about playing in that. You get to play at a Michigan, or at a Penn State, or at an Ohio State or a Wisconsin. I think kids get excited about that.”

247Sports is already ranking UCLA’s 2024 class as a B1G program. As the only B1G team with commitments in the single digits (9), the Bruins are No. 15 out of 16 teams, ahead of Northwestern.

Andrew Olson

A former Florida beat reporter, Andrew writes for the Saturday Tradition News Desk.