What grandiose career ambitions did Oregon coach Chip Kelly harbor 20 years ago when his first college coaching job meant squeezing into a one-bedroom apartment on Morningside Drive and 120th Street with four other part-time coaches at Columbia?
Did his hopes of a sitting in a plush leather chair overlooking a vast practice facility seem a dead wish when the volley of the occasional gunshot resounded through Riverside Park, where Charles Bronson exacted vigilante justice?
Did he fantasize of one day implementing the fastest, quirkiest and most explosive offense in college football?
Nope. Kelly never wondered. He wore blinders. He was Secretariat with a headset.
“I had no dreams, no expectations,” Kelly told The Post. “I wanted to coach and I was coaching. I enjoyed the job. Some people look around for other opportunities. I’ve always liked the one I had.”
He *** loves **** the one he has now.
The Ducks, ranked No. 2 in the BCS standings, lead the nation in scoring, averaging 55 points a game with a staccato offense Kelly fosters by rattling, “Tempo! Tempo! Tempo!” so often in practice you wonder how he breathes.
“It’s unbelievable how fast he talks,” said Bill Boles, Kelly’s college coach at New Hampshire. “And it’s out of the side of his mouth, so by the time you understand what he said, he’s on to the next thought.”
Here’s the thought of the day in college football: Oregon (7-0 overall, 4-0 Pac-10) plays at USC (5-2, 2-2) tonight in a game that officially could shift the balance of power on the West Coast. USC is on NCAA probation, Pete Carroll is in the NFL, and Kelly’s program, backed by Oregon grad and Nike founded Phil Knight, is poised to become a perennial Top 5 program.
“I’m not surprised he’s doing it,” said Sean McDonnell, the head coach at New Hampshire who got Kelly that first job at Columbia. “I’m surprised he got the opportunity to do it this quickly.”
Kelly’s roadmap from Columbia to Oregon is arguably the most unorthodox journey in big time college football history. He caught McDonnell’s eye when Kelly was the quarterback at Manchester Central High and McDonnell was the coach at Manchester West.
“He would come into the huddle and draw plays in the dirt like it was sandlot football and they’d run them,” said McDonnell.
After two years as a part-time defensive assistant at Columbia, Kelly returned to New Hampshire, where the former college defensive back coached running backs. Then he went to Johns Hopkins as the defensive coordinator. He later returned to his alma mater for his second stint as the running backs coach. After two years he convinced Bowes, a former offensive lineman, to give him the offensive line coach position.
“I thought it best to hire someone who had played offensive line to coach it,” Bowes said. “Chip talked me into it. To my amazement, he picked it up exceptionally fast. He was a young coach who wanted to know everything about football.”
Kelly would literally pay for more knowledge. He traveled to Europe and studied the now-defunct NFL Europe teams. He went to Canada and took notes on the wide-open play in the CFL.
He visited other staffs — Clemson, Wake Forest, Northwestern, Georgia Tech and Oregon, where then Ducks coach Mike Bellotti took note of the sponge from New Hampshire. When McDonnell replaced Bowes in 1999, he appointed Kelly his offensive coordinator. The madness began.
“We were playing South Florida and Chip came in and said, ‘If we want to have a chance, we have to run the Wing T,”‘ McDonnell said. “We’d never practiced it, didn’t know how to block it.
“We lost 42-41 in overtime. The whole game I’m watching us run the Wing-T thinking, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.'”
This is what both the Ducks and opposing players say about Oregon’s offense.
Oregon uses large placards divided into four quadrants featuring seemingly random symbols — a four-leaf clover, a battleship, a Great White shark, a picture of Shaq, etc., to signal formations.
This quick burst of information prohibits defenses from stealing Oregon’s signs and enhances Kelly’s mantra, “Tempo! Tempo! Tempo!”
“I don’t know how to read those,” offensive lineman Jordan Holmes said. “It’s for the quarterbacks and skill guys. It’s just another way to help us play faster. I’ve seen it before at other schools.
“There’s a lot of other stuff he does that when he first shows us, you look at the guy next to and say, ‘There’s no way this is going to work,’ but it does.”