UCLA football tackles late kickoff times, maintains promising season start
No. 20 UCLA football has two future games on its current schedule that start at 7:30 p.m., in matchups against Arizona State and Arizona. The Bruins also have six games that do not yet have times scheduled. (David Rimer/Assistant Photo editor)
By Jon Christon
Sept. 29, 2021 11:56 p.m.
The Bruins have spent four straight weeks in the AP Top 25 for the first time since 2015.
However, even with their best start of the coach Chip Kelly era, Bruin football is still drawing the short end of the stick in one area: kickoff times.
“We have no say in when we play,” Kelly said. “But when a whole faction of the country doesn’t get to see you play, it has to factor in.”
No. 20 UCLA football (3-1, 1-0 Pac-12) is set to begin a stretch of two straight games kicking off at 7:30 p.m., with a home matchup against Arizona State (3-1, 1-0) on Saturday and a road game against Arizona (0-4, 0-1) the following week. While the team’s last game against Stanford began at 3:00 p.m., the contest before that was a 7:45 p.m. bout with No. 18 Fresno State – which marked the Bruins’ latest start time for a game in nearly six years.
Since Kelly’s first year in Westwood in 2018, the Bruins have yet to play more than three games in a season with start times later than 7 p.m. This year, however, UCLA will have three such games in its first six contests.
Currently, the NCAA spreads out start times from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. PST with the Pac-12, on average, getting the latest start times of any Power 5 conference because of its member schools’ geographic locations.
Kelly said he prefers the NFL model, where most games are played at the same time in the early afternoon, regardless of where the host team is located.
“The whole, ‘We don’t want to play certain games at certain times’ – that’s the part I don’t understand,” Kelly said. “Put them on and then the fans decide what game they want to watch. That’s their choice. That’s the good part of being American – you get to pick the game you want to see.”
After taking over in July, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff said one of his main goals is to give the conference’s football team more exposure, which starts with having more accessible kickoff times.
In an article with Mercury News earlier in September, Kliavkoff said there are benefits to the late kickoffs – particularly with television contracts – but he acknowledged the downsides as well, namely that Pac-12 teams having fewer prime time opportunities than their Power 5 counterparts costs players national recognition.
Kelly pointed to the example of former Stanford running back Christian McCaffrey, who finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting in 2015, saying the running back would have finished first if his team had a schedule with fewer late kickoffs.
The coach said the Cardinal’s late games didn’t allow the rest of the country to watch McCaffrey compete. Stanford played seven of its 14 games that season at 7 p.m. PST or later, while Alabama – home of the 2015 Heisman Trophy winner Derrick Henry – played in zero.
“I’m a firm believer Christian McCaffrey did not win the Heisman Trophy because they played so many night games,” Kelly said. “He’s the all-time all-purpose player in college football history, yet didn’t win the Heisman Trophy. To me, it was because of a lack of exposure, and I think everybody understands that.”
However, the kickoff times are not a concern for the players on the field, according to redshirt junior wide receiver Josiah Norwood.
“Honestly, I could care less that we play at 7:30, 10:30 (EST),” Norwood said. “Coach Kelly always talks about just being ready to play whenever we have our scheduled game, and I think we do a really good job of that.”
Redshirt junior tight end Greg Dulcich added that the later kickoffs actually give the players more time to prepare, which can be helpful in certain situations.
“Obviously, it’s a little different since you just kind of sit around and you’re off your feet a little longer,” Dulcich said. “It gives you time to get some extra stretching in if you need or maybe see an assignment that you maybe didn’t pick up on earlier.”
UCLA still has six contests on the schedule without start times, and while Kelly said he prefers afternoon kickoffs, he said those games could be scheduled for any time at any place and his team would be ready.
“(When) they tell us when we play, we play,” Kelly said. “(If) they tell us when we play in Lot 8 at 6 a.m., we’re gonna play in Lot 8.”
