When Will Muschamp was fired from Florida, Chip Kelly's name immediately began to circulate as a possible replacement. Because, obviously, Kelly's tired of winning the NFC East and trying to chase down a Super Bowl. Resurrecting Mark Sanchez' NFL career? Not challenging enough obviously.
Just kidding. Chip's pretty happy in Philly, where he's got a pretty good thing going. Asked Wednesday about Florida rumors, he called them "false."
HC Chip Kelly: Florida hasn't contacted me. And if they did, I wouldn't listen. It's false. I think false things are silly.
— Eagles Insider (@EaglesInsider) December 3, 2014
The prevailing theory on Kelly returning to Florida involves some combination of a) Florida being a great job, b) Chip's show-cause penalty expiring on Christmas 2014 and c) some sort of delusional notion that college coaching jobs are more coveted than NFL jobs.
(A) is accurate -- Florida is a great job. Multiple national coaches have won national titles there. It's a recruiting hotbed and positioned in the weaker SEC division, which sets up nicely for title-chasin'.
(B) is also accurate -- as our Dennis Dodd reported last year, Kelly's show cause is up in about the course of an advent calendar.
(C) is the problem here. The "delusional" thing isn't me being a pro-football-writing jerk. NFL jobs are harder to come by, don't involve recruiting, don't involve governing bodies trying to keep you from paying players and feature a chance at the ultimate goal for all football coaches: winning a Super Bowl.
We saw something similar happen with Texas last year, when Chip was rolling right along as a rookie coach. He was "high on the list" for the Longhorns and quickly put a line through his own name by laughing off the notion.
Anything can happen, of course. A year prior to taking the Eagles job, Kelly looked locked for the Buccaneers job before pulling back and sticking at Oregon.
But he's doing pretty well right now. Sanchez is playing well, he's got Nick Foles on the backburner, the Eagles are first in the NFC East and a top-three seed in the conference. Chip's staring at the possibility of needing to win a couple games to hoist the Lombardi.
It's not that simple to do, but he's not walking away from it to help reboot Florida's program.
