It was a busy Friday for the Ohio State Buckeyes last week.
Not only did they lose offensive coordinator Bill O'Brien - who accepted the head coaching job at Boston College just three weeks after being hired by the Buckeyes - but they also had to move to find a new play caller.
Fortunately for the Buckeyes, they were able to do just that, bringing in former UCLA and Oregon head coach Chip Kelly.
It was an unprecedented move, to say the least, with Kelly ostensibly taking a demotion to head from Los Angeles to Columbus.
It was such a shocking move, in fact, that long-time L.A. Times columnist Bill Plaschke went after Kelly for his decision in a recent column, calling him 'cowardly', 'selfish' and 'disgusting' among other criticisms.
"For the final play of his sorry UCLA tenure, Chip Kelly finally ran something that fooled somebody," Plaschke wrote. "A cowardly reverse. Less than three months after the UCLA administration publicly embraced him, he flipped them off. Less than three months after the UCLA players beat USC in his honor, he walked out on them."
When UCLA hired Kelly, the hope was that he would bring back shades of his 2009-2012 Oregon program - teams that had the nation's most explosive and dynamic offenses, and went 46-7, won 12 games in three-straight seasons, and made four-straight BCS games, including a national title game.
However, those plans never came to fruition. Instead, in six seasons with UCLA, Kelly went 35-34, winning 25 of those games and making three bowl games in the last three seasons.
Suffice it to say, that after six seasons of trying, Kelly was understandably ready for a change. Plaschke recognized that in his column.
What he too exception to more than anything was the timing of the move - a move, mind you, that likely would not have happened had Bill O'Brien stayed in Columbus.
"Look, this has to be some sort of sick joke, no?" Plaschke asked. "He took a demotion in title to work at a lesser position for a school in the same league? And he’s doing it now? Classy. Professional. Disgusting... He should have been fired long before he could pull this selfish stunt, long before his lame opportunism turned the program into steaming wreckage, long before now."
Whatever the case, Kelly is now with the Buckeyes, and the Bruins are on a search for a new head coach.
Fortunately for both teams, they are not scheduled to face off in the new-look Big Ten, which welcomes USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington to the fold next season.
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