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It turns out that Chip Kelly isn't that much like Pete Carroll after all. While Kelly did leave Oregon in the midst of an NCAA investigation, the slap on the wrist received by the team and coach today show that it was hardly anything to cause Kelly to escape to the NFL.
Typically, bowl bans are handed down for serious NCAA violations, but Oregon was only docked 1 scholarship per year over the next 2 seasons and put on probation for recruiting violations. The infractions stem from the team's use of certain recruiting services.
For Chip Kelly's part, he was handed an 18 month "show cause" penalty which means only that if he wants to coach at a college in the next 18 months, he and that school will have to show that they have a plan to monitor and avoid future violations. There's more or less no chance that he'll be looking for a college job over that time and even if for some reason he did, he'd still be free to coach...
To put it plainly, an actual slap on the wrist would have been a harsher penalty.
"Now that the NCAA has concluded their investigation and penalized the University of Oregon and its football program, I want to apologize to the University of Oregon, all of its current and former players and their fans," Kelly said in a statement. "I accept my share of responsibility for the actions that led to the penalties. As I have I stated before, the NCAA investigation and subsequent ruling had no impact on my decision to leave Oregon for Philadelphia."
In reality, this doesn't cast much of a pall over Kelly's time at Oregon or hurt his legacy there. It also likely proves once and for all that his jumpt to the NFL wasn't motivated by the investigations.
Neither the Eagles nor the NFL will take further action so it seems like this is done and dusted.
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