63 Players Who had Eligibility Remaining Have Departed Since Chip Kelly’s arrival

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Sixty-three players who had eligibility remaining have departed since Kelly’s arrival in November 2017, complicating his rebuilding efforts and putting the Bruins at risk of possible penalties because of low Academic Progress Rate scores.

Kelly blamed the high number of departures on the quick-fix availability of the transfer portal, allowing those who weren’t playing an easy way out, but significantly more players have left his program than other Pac-12 Conference teams that hired coaches at the same time.

Tracy Pierson, who has covered UCLA football for Bruin Report Online since 1999, dubbed UCLA’s exodus “The Chip Kelly Purge” and said there was no comparable flight of players under previous coaches Bob Toledo, Karl Dorrell, Rick Neuheisel or Mora.

“No new coach transition comes close,” Pierson said.

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“I would say it kind of made it hard to play football for him for some of those guys, you know what I’m saying?” Alloway said. “Football is already a mentally draining sport in every other way and then his kind of formula could take some guys over the edge.”

How so?

“It’s not a secret that coach Kelly has his rules and morals and stuff, and if you kind of don’t fit that or you don’t agree with that, then he’s on like a no-tolerance policy, like you can leave,” Alloway said. “He’s not making anybody stay there; a lot of guys choose to leave, but he has a really strict thing going on over there and I respect him a lot. Hopefully it wins him some games; it hasn’t really yet.

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