UCLA head coach Chip Kelly is not a fan of night games, preferring to wake up and start playing a game by the early afternoon, at the latest.
Instead, the 12th-ranked Bruins will have their second 7:30 p.m. kickoff of the season Saturday when they face Stanford at the Rose Bowl. Aside from the financial gain from the media contract with ESPN, which will air the game, Kelly said he sees “zero benefit” in a late kickoff.
“Television, money, that’s it,” Kelly said before Wednesday’s practice. “You want to wake up, you want to play. You don’t want to sit around and wait all day to do something that you train yourself and you want to do. If you’re a competitor, you want to get up and you want to play football.
“I don’t think any player or any coach says, ‘Hey, what do you want to do tomorrow? Well, let’s sit around all day and do something tomorrow night.’”
The only change in preparation schedule on game day, Kelly added, is in things like the time of the pregame meal. The team’s pregame schedule each week is contingent upon the kickoff time.
The extra hours will just be more time to wait before attempting to rebound from last Saturday’s 45-30 loss at now-No. 8 Oregon.
Kelly said the team has responded “great” in the first two practices of the week.
“It’s a long season,” Kelly said. “You play 12 games, you only get 12 opportunities, and you can’t let one game equal two games. What I mean by that is if we get beat once, you can’t let that team beat you again. I think sometimes that’s your attitude is you’re feeling sorry for yourself. But we don’t get that around here. We also have great leadership with our older players.”
