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BCS NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: AUBURN v OREGON

January 7, 2011

Chip Kelly

GLENDALE, ARIZONA

Q. Question about parity in college football. The NFL has always sought parity. It seems by now every year we have two different teams, often different conferences involved in the national championship game. Any thoughts on why so many schools are a big part of the parity with the national championship game?
COACH KELLY: I just think there are so many good players out there and that with the 85 scholarship limit and the fact you can only sign 25 in the classes, that not all players can go to one school and you can't stockpile talent. I think there is a mind-set from the coaches out there, you know, in schools like our situation, it is about developing the talent that you get. We don't always win the recruiting battles. We are not always number one in the country on the recruiting list. It doesn't mean anything when you look at the star system for high school kids coming out.
It is about finding the right fight for your University and developing them when you get there. I think that's what our staff has done a great job of, is developing the talent that we have.

Q. Do you think the opportunity to be on T.V., the Tuesday night games, the Wednesday night games, a kid who might 20 years ago have sat at the bench now wants to play on T.V. on a Tuesday or Wednesday?
COACH KELLY: I hadn't thought of it that way. That's probably a reason. I think there's more opportunities to be seen out there. But I don't ever sell our kids on the fact that they come to our school because you can be on T.V. I want kids that want to come to our school that have a passion for playing football.
It doesn't matter if there is one person on the stand or 60,000 or one person watching on television or millions watching on television. It is do you have a passion about playing the game. We talked to our team all the time. We don't motivate ourselves by outside influences. We motivate ourselves intrinsically, that's why we have such a good football team right now.

Q. Because you are so regimented and you like to practice early, is all of these media obligations, is it tough to negotiate the week because of it?
COACH KELLY: We planned our schedule around this. We knew exactly what our media obligations were. Our practices have been a little bit later here in Arizona than they are during the normal school year. But we don't have class like we do back in Eugene. We actually are attending class here but we are attending class for two hours in the afternoon from usually 23:0 to 4:30 back at the hotel. We have had our schedule set since we found out we were playing in this game.
Once our kids get into a schedule and a rhythm, it has been the same thing. We practiced at the same time whether we were in Eugene or down here. We have kept that consistency.

Q. Given how quickly this has happened for you personally, do you have to pinch yourself every once in a while, tell yourself you are actually here?
COACH KELLY: I am not a pinch myself kind of guy.

Q. Not even once?
COACH KELLY: No.

Q. We haven't had the luxury of seeing the team behind the scenes this week. How have you felt about how they have handled everything? Have they been enjoying themselves? I imagine they have been focused. What's it been like?
COACH KELLY: They are fired up. It has been great. We miss you guys. I apologize for that.
Our whole process is let's eliminate distractions. When you get to a game like this with a million people on the sideline clicking pictures like you are and trying to focus and concentrate on what they are trying to do, our task at hand is Monday night. Our players have been fantastic all year long in preparation and they have been great up until today. We will see it. We will run out to practice right after this and hopefully we can keep that same mind-set through Monday.

Q. Have they been enjoying themselves?
COACH KELLY: Our kids enjoy themselves in everything they do. I don't think part of this whole deal is how do we entertain them. They entertain themselves.
If you have a passion for playing football like this group of young men has and our coaching staff has, our kids love practice and they love playing in games. So it wasn't like, hey, we get to go to a Bowl game, what amusement parks are we going to? It's we get a chance to play Auburn in the national championship game, and that's what our focus is on.

Q. Can you talk about Mike Bellotti's impact on you, this program and getting to this stage?
COACH KELLY: Mike hired me. So he has got a little bit of impact on this whole deal. He hired me in 2007 to come out there and run the offense. He hired every other coach on staff except for Mark Helfrich who I brought in after I became the head coach. So he has got a huge footprint, huge impact on this whole program.
He was our athletic director for a year after he stepped down from being a head football coach. All of us have direct ties to Coach.

Q. What about you personally? Are there tangible ways that he helped us or influenced you?
COACH KELLY: Besides giving me a job? Yeah. He was obviously the head coach and I was the offensive coordinator. So I worked with him on a daily basis and got to observe good things. I learned from it just like I learned from every other head coach I have worked for since I have been in college football.

Q. What was your connection with him in New Hampshire?
COACH KELLY: I didn't have a connection. Somebody talked to him and recommended me, and he called me on the phone one day. And after he said who he was, I said: Seriously. Who is this?

Q. Who was the guy that recommended you?
COACH KELLY: I don't know. I had known -- Gary Crowton was the offensive coordinator there before, before Gary went to LSU. He coached at New Hampshire back in the day a long time ago. I was friendly with Gary. I don't know if Gary recommended me.
I had known Jeff Hawkins who is on their staff as a director of football operations, currently still our director of football operations. But I don't know specifically. Would you have to ask Mike that question.

Q. Can you talk about Micky Ward and how you know him and what you think about him as an athlete?
COACH KELLY: What I think of Micky Ward? He is the toughest person I have ever met in my entire life.

Q. How do you know him?
COACH KELLY: He is from Lowell, Massachusetts. I grew up in 20 miles away. If you grew up in New England, you knew who Micky Ward was. Whenever we talked to our team about -- I use a lot of different sports analogies with our team, whether I talk to them about being Secretariat or I talk to them about being Steve Prefontaine or I talk to them about being Micky Ward. And I had some friends that knew Micky, and we got together and I have been friendly with him ever since. He had an opportunity to come out and speak to our team before we played the UCLA game.

Q. How cool was it to watch The Fighter? Did you learn stuff that you didn't know when you watched the fighter?
COACH KELLY: I didn't know Micky before he became world champion. So to go to the movie like we did last night and find out how he got to where he got to, it is an awesome story.
I'm excited. Micky is coming on Sunday and he will be with us for the game on Monday night.

Q. Do you ever use Peter Jacobsen when you are talking to the team?
COACH KELLY: Yes, we do, they are usually humorous stories.

Q. What does he mean to your program? He is a huge fan?
COACH KELLY: He is awesome. He has the Peter Jacobsen's Legends golf tournament in June every year. The first time I met him was in 2007. What he gives back to our university is unbelievable. That tournament itself and just his passion for the University of Oregon, his brother is a University of Oregon guy, he has got a nephew that played golf there, too. Pete's awesome.
I know he will be here -- anybody that's an Oregon person is going to be here this weekend. Dan Fouts, Ahmad Rashad, Joey Harrington, Dennis Dixon. Everybody is coming.

Q. Does he give you insight: You need to run this play, you need to do this better? Does he give you any advice?
COACH KELLY: He tries to. And I say I'm never going to give you advice on how to swing a golf club, so you stick to your sport, I will stick to mine.

Q. Do you think the first few series will be the tail's tale about the pace?
COACH KELLY: I don't know. I really don't know. You can't predict is it going to be early. Is it going to be late. I think it's -- it's going to be a 60-minute football game, I can tell you that. I don't know how it is going to play itself out.

Q. Talk about the ticket and this being one of the hottest tickets in BCS history and in two small markets relatively in the state of Alabama and Oregon.
COACH KELLY: I'm unaware of the ticket prices. I don't have to pay for mine.

Q. Four grand?
COACH KELLY: Four grand? To come to this game? (Smiling).
Wow. That's awesome.

Q. What do you get from each of those individual guys as far as motivation, Jon Gruden, Micky Ward? I know you talked about him.
COACH KELLY: It depends on the message that week, what are we trying to accomplish. Every week it is usually something different because everybody we play is different. So it's -- what am I talking about and then how do I hammer that point home instead of I think sometimes if it is just the head coach, we use videos for motivation. We use soundtracks for motivation. We use pictures.
If I can bring in somebody -- and I don't bring in too many people. I only have two or three people actually come in, whether it was Tony Dungy or Micky or Gru come talk to our team.
I'm pretty specific on what I want to get accomplished. It is not just, hey, let's have this guy come in and, while he is speaking, where is he going with this thing? There is a specific reason for what we're doing and everything.

Q. (Question about Greg Bell)?
COACH KELLY: He was just another resource. I had read his book before I ever went to the University of Oregon. When I got there, it was an opportunity to meet with another guy.

Q. Were you at New Hampshire? How did you find it?
COACH KELLY: Amazon.com. It is a Web site.

Q. Did somebody recommend it?
COACH KELLY: No, I'm always reading motivational things and just trying to see how you can do things better. I think that's the part that's fun about our job, is we get to every day get up and you kind of got a thirst and knowledge of how do we do this thing better than we did before. Someone may recommend, hey, have you read this or have you ever seen the Jim Collins book, Good to Great, and all of a sudden read some of those things.
And then your job as a coach is you can't throw everything at them. What applies to the specific situation we are in right now and how can it work.

Q. Is there anybody brought in this week?
COACH KELLY: We brought them all in. Everyone's here. Tony Dungy, Jon Gruden, Greg Bell. Micky Ward is here. You name it, they are going to be here this week.

Q. Any chance of hitting them over the head too much with this stuff?
COACH KELLY: No, they are not talking to our team but they are coming here to support us. It will be status quo. There is no one talking to our team this week.

Q. Some of the things that you mentioned like Secretariat and The Fighter, are you at all taking not necessarily an underdog approach to this game but sort of a us against the world like Micky Ward or a Secretariat?
COACH KELLY: No. I mean, our message with Secretariat is he didn't care. He ran -- I never looked at Secretariat as an underdog. You can watch that movie. You win the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths, that's not an underdog in my book.
I think the message we had with Secretariat is it didn't care about what its competition was. It was a faceless opponent. It went out when the gate opened it ran as fast as it could as long as it could. That's what Steve Prefontaine did. He ran as fast as he could for as long as he did. If he didn't do it that way, then he wasn't happy with it.
We are not going to lay back, sit back and do it. We have never taken that -- we don't talk much about our opponent, to be honest with you. From a scheme standpoint we do. We don't use those "are we an underdog" and all that. Those are outside influences that motivate you. We are intrinsically motivated operation.

Q. Do you have an appreciation for what you have done? There are so many coaches in football that appeal to programs and it is step by step. Just talk about your sense of being able to get here as quickly as you have.
COACH KELLY: You know, that's a good question. Make no mistake about it, I didn't take over a program that was down in the dumps now. I mean, it was a pretty good team. And I was fortunate. The cupboards weren't bare when I became the head coach.
I'm just continuing what Coach Brooks and Coach Bellotti have done in the past. That's what a head coach's job is. You will be here for X amount of years and can you put yourself in a situation where you have an opportunity to be successful. And the game itself is always played by the players. We are winning right now because we have really good players.

Q. How impressed have you been with Darron Thomas and his ability to step into a tough situation and really take control of this offense?
COACH KELLY: I have been really impressed with Darron. To be a first-year starter and to do what he's done over the course of the season has been fun to watch. I have watched him get better and better each game as we've gone along through our season, and then each week I think he learned something new about himself. We learned something new about him.
He has been fantastic. To be a sophomore, first-year starter and take his team to a Pac-10 championship and an opportunity to play in the in the championship game is phenomenal.

Q. At one point in camp he did something that you knew he would be the guy?
COACH KELLY: There isn't one specific, like this play. It was like -- it was an accumulation through spring practice, through fall camp, leading up to our first game of we had to name a starter at the quarterback position, and it was a real spirited competition between him and Nate Costa for the job. And eventually through the body of work, we just felt like Darron was going to give us a better shot.

Q. What leadership role does he play and how tough is that just being a sophomore?
COACH KELLY: You know, I don't think years define any leadership. So I can tell you I have a lot of friends that are the same age as me are very immature and I wouldn't follow them anywhere.
Time served doesn't mean anything. It is how you carry yourself. How you prepare. And the best form of leadership is leadership by example. And you are not going to find a harder working kid on our team than Darron.

Q. Some people have looked at your path to this position coming through New Hampshire as unusual. Is there a normal path to this position in college football?
COACH KELLY: I don't think so. I was talking to Coach Chizik last night. I coached against Chizik when he was at Stephen F. Austin. He didn't know me, I didn't know him at the time. He spent eight years at I-AA. Jim Tressel was a I-AA head coach at Youngstown State. Coaches come from all walks of life. It's just do you get an opportunity to coach at a certain level.
I have always felt the big time is where you are at. It doesn't matter if you are going to play in a game that everyone is going to watch or no one is going to watch, you will approach it the same way.

Q. Who won that game?
COACH KELLY: They did, 17-14.

Q. So much has been made about Cam Newton on one side and LaMichael James on the other. If you were starting a team from scratch, which guy would you choose?
COACH KELLY: I don't deal with hypotheticals. You didn't know that answer, did you?

Q. I did not know that answer. Let me ask you about LaMichael James. He had some rough patches. He had the arrest, the NCAA accusations. I don't know his character. If you had to describe to me his character, how would you describe it?
COACH KELLY: The best character you can have. Above reproach. He is in a situation where people are going to accuse him of things because of who he is. I have all the confidence in the world he is a great young man.

Q. When he had that situation in February, how difficult is it for a head coach to deal with the situation like that?
COACH KELLY: It wasn't difficult. It is what you got to deal with. I believed in him. I think he handled the situation well.

Q. Can you talk about for yourself, were you always a competitive guy? Is that just something about you in anything you do, you want to win? Do you just -- is that just how you are on the football field?
COACH KELLY: Any coach is a competitive guy. He wouldn't get into this field if you weren't a competitive guy, if you didn't care about the outcome. So I don't think I'm any different than any other coach. I have always been competitive in everything I have done. If you are going to keep score, you might as well win. You might as well prepare to win. That's the fun part.

Q. Your hurry-up offense, I'm surprised it doesn't have a nickname. Are you? Do you expect it to be -- how disruptive do you expect it to be for them given that they have had this time to prepare? How does that factor in?
COACH KELLY: You will find out when we play on Monday night. But they run a hurry-up offense themselves. I don't think this is a new thing to them.
I think when you have this amount of time to prepare, I think both teams will be prepared. It will come down to the way it should come down. It will come down to the play makers on the field making plays. Whichever ones can make the most will win the game.

Q. I have heard you talk about how you think your experience from last year's BCS Bowl game can help you this year. What specifically do you think will help you given the experience from last year?
COACH KELLY: I never really said that. So I just think everybody is a byproduct of their experiences. So you learn from history. You are doomed to repeat it. That's what Santiago said. Obviously whenever we have a situation that we have been through something before, we try to look back at it and say how do we do things better.
We are a very analytical operation. Our goal is to get better every day. We can get better every day by the experiences that we have.
Whether it was our experience at the Holiday Bowl two years ago or the Sun Bowl three years ago or the Rose Bowl last year, we will go back and learn from all those experiences.

Q. You guys have been really great in the second half and fourth quarter, so has Auburn. You don't feel that puts any more pressure on you to score points earlier and not to get down earlier?
COACH KELLY: We don't think about pressure. We don't talk about we need to be up here. Our goal is to be ahead at the end of the game. You don't get anything for being ahead early or late. We will go out and play our game. They will play their game. It will be dissected a million different ways between now and then.
It will still come down to us playing them. We will do what they we do. They will do what they do and we will see what happens.

Q. Are you worried about them playing tight in such a big game, coming out and being too tight?
COACH KELLY: I haven't seen it yet from them. So we'll see when we get there.

Q. Darron Thomas is kind of like "the other quarterback" in this game. In a way, he almost started out in fall camp as the other quarterback who surprised everybody. Can you talk a little bit about his progression from somebody on the scout team last year to a starter in one of the leaders of the team this season.
COACH KELLY: Yeah, it's logical. I mean, when you come in as a young player, you are going to start at the bottom and work your way up. So as a sophomore, he has put himself -- redshirt sophomore he has put himself in a position to play.
Everything he has done here, it hasn't surprised us or our coaching staff or our players. We have had total confidence in Darron since he has been here.
To the fact that he is the other quarterback, the other guy won the Heisman Trophy. So I would consider him the other quarterback myself, too. Cam is the best college football player in the country. And Darron's has done a fantastic job for us. We're excited in what he's going to be able to do for us.
He understands that role and it is not like he -- we played that up, that you are not getting enough credit. He is playing against arguably the best college football player in the country on the other side.

Q. When you have been watching the Auburn tapes or just watching football in general, have you found the SEC teams to be significantly faster or stronger or better than the teams in the Pac-10 or other conferences that you look at?
COACH KELLY: No. We don't look at it that way. I have been asked that question before. I don't analyze it by what teams are playing against somebody.
When I watch Auburn on tape, I'm watching how they are doing schematically and who their play makers are. I don't get into that what's this league about, what's that league about. I know we played Tennessee this year, so we have had a game in the SEC.

Q. Do you think there is a SEC aura offensively? They have won four of the last national titles. Is that all overhyped?
COACH KELLY: I don't know. I don't get concerned with that. I don't worry about any of that stuff.

Q. It seems like in recruiting all these guys, a lot of them -- there was one attribute that they were not tall enough or not the right size. Otherwise they would have had every school in the country after them. How is your staff evaluating these guys?
COACH KELLY: How good are they at evaluating? Obviously we're here. So I would say they're pretty good.
Just because other people offer someone, doesn't mean that they are right either. I think people get caught up on that too much. I think your job as a recruiter and as an evaluator of talent has to be who fits in your system at your school in the environment that you have. And that's what's important to us. So we've never got caught up in -- I really -- I know I'm on record many times. I think all that stuff that goes on on the signing day and rating the signing classes is the most overblown thing I have ever seen in my entire life.

Q. (Question about seniors that are late bloomers)?
COACH KELLY: That's not true.

Q. You will get them sooner, but you are willing to do both.
COACH KELLY: I will do whatever as soon as it gets us good players.

Q. With your second BCS Bowl, playing in the championship game, do you feel like Oregon has arrived, where it automatically can be considered one of those top ten like Alabama, Texas, Florida, people like that?
COACH KELLY: First off, I never think anybody has arrived, because once you think you have arrived you will get passed on by.
Second off, I could care less if we were ranked anywhere. The only time rankings mean anything is on the last game of the season and you figure out which Bowl game you are going to. When you say next year will you be preseason 5, it means absolutely nothing. What matters is that where do you finish the season. We run our football program based -- not based on outside influences, so I don't care if we are ranked or unranked.
We got two teams playing in the national championship that were ranked outside the top ten for the season. That's validity in terms of how we approach things.

Q. Does that help the recruiting process?
COACH KELLY: No.

Q. Not at all?
COACH KELLY: I don't think so. I don't want a kid that wants to come here because of our rankings. I want a kid that wants to come to the University of Oregon to get a great degree, to be at a great university, to be coached by an unbelievable staff, and has a passion for playing football. If he's going to pick another school over us because of the rankings, then I don't want him.

Q. Had to play catchup a few times in the first half this season. How important is it with the offense you are going against to manage that first half and maybe not get behind too much?
COACH KELLY: You already got us behind? (Smiling).
I think it is very important not to be behind at all in the game.

Q. But based on other first halves you had, if that winds up being the case, obviously not the prime situation --
COACH KELLY: We don't think of it that way. We play the game. So it is not we can't be behind at this point or we can't be yours. I know you guys love to make a big deal of what the score is at halftime. We haven't gotten an award for the halftime scores. It is at the end of the game and what happens to it.
We have never talked to our team about, hey, we're here, hey, we're there. Let's play a full 60 minutes. We play fast, we play hard, and we finish. That's what we try to preach to our players. What happens in the first half has a bearing on the game and it is important to us, but it is not the end-all, so we don't get caught up in that.

Q. How prepared is this team based on what you have seen in the week of practice since you have been down here?
COACH KELLY: They are about three days away.

Q. Can you talk about as your offense has evolved, how the signaling has changed and evolved with in terms of getting plays in quicker to keep your tempo?
COACH KELLY: We are always trying to figure out ways to do things faster.
So it is always a constant evolution. I think it is a fun part of what coaching is, is how do we effectively communicate what we want to have accomplished on that next play -- a lineman assignment, formation, snap count, what are we running -- in an effective manner. I think that's always an evolutionary thing for us.

Q. When bringing the boards in, which everyone sees and identifies with your signaling, was there a worry at the end of last season that people might have been manipulating your signage? Did you try to diversify it?
COACH KELLY: No, that's just another urban myth that everybody said that we thought somebody had compromised our signal system and then we decided to go another way. I have no idea where that ever came from. That didn't have anything to do with what we're doing.

Q. Do you find it surreal to look around this room and see all these people here to see you and talk to you?
COACH KELLY: Very, very surreal.

Q. How do you spend game day?
COACH KELLY: How will I spend dame gay?

Q. The morning of game day.
COACH KELLY: Same system we have had all along. We will have breakfast at a certain time. Our kids will go back to the room for a little bit. Then we will have a walk, which we call flow, so they are not laying down. Me and Jimmy Radcliffe will take them for a walk. There is a specific place. We have that mapped out in terms of where we are going. They will come back for hydration. We will have chapel 4 1/2 hours before game. We will eat four hours before the game. We will have team meetings at the hotel offensively and defensively, not position meetings.
Then we will jump on the bus and go to Glendale.

Q. Do you know what we are eating?
COACH KELLY: Yeah.

Q. Are you involved in that decision?
COACH KELLY: Yeah. And that's all mapped out before the season starts.

Q. What are you having?
COACH KELLY: We have pasta. There will be a light meat. There will be some chicken and some fish.

Q. Why don't you like to talk about yourself?
COACH KELLY: Because I know about myself.

Q. (Indiscernible)?
COACH KELLY: That's great. I entertain myself.
I never got caught up in that. And I hang out with a bunch of people and it's the environment we grew up in. If somebody started talking about themselves or I had a friend talking in the third person, he may get hit.

Q. Everybody starts out wanting to be here. Every coaching team has the same goals. Why was this different for y'all? What happened?
COACH KELLY: Why are we here?

Q. What made this difference that you were able to get here?
COACH KELLY: We won. I don't mean to be -- I mean, that's what it's all about, is can you stay focused on the task at hand and win every single week consistently. That's what makes the regular season in college football so special, is that you can't afford to have a slipup. You can't afford one game. And the speculation starts before the season starts and then goes to that first week when the BCS rankings come out and then all of a sudden each week seems to get more difficult if you allow the outside influences to affect you. People telling you you got to start lobbying to see where you are going to finish in this whole thing because if you don't lobby and you end up being at this situation, you will never get into it.
We never got caught up in that. We knew the one thing we controlled was how hard do we prepare each week to be successful on that weekend. And if we do, enjoy it for 24 hours, pick your head up again and do it the next week. If you do that, then you will have an opportunity the first week in December to say, hey, we got a chance to go play in this game.

Q. Should Oregon fans be worried that you are becoming such a hot commodity that you would leave Oregon for another job?
COACH KELLY: Again, outside influences. I'm really worried about Monday night. Should they be? I have never told our fans what to think.

Q. When you look back on your days at New Hampshire, did you ever think you would be here playing for a national championship?
COACH KELLY: Yes. Knew it.

Q. Why?
COACH KELLY: I had it mapped out. I got my life mapped out. 2011, January 10th, we would be playing.

Q. That being the case, what's going to happen Monday night?
COACH KELLY: Monday night. I haven't gotten that far. I just got myself to the 10th. I have no idea. I don't think any coach knows. You just got different paths that you end up taking and when an opportunity comes, you just weigh is it better than the situation that I'm in. But to me it doesn't mean anything different than whatever level you are coaching at.
I have had a chance to go to Oregon and I feel very fortunate that I have been given this opportunity and I take it very seriously.
Did I have a plan that I was going to be here? Did I think six years ago I would be sitting in this situation? No.

Q. Ted Roof said he coached against you when he was at UMass. Do you remember how that went?
COACH KELLY: We beat him 40-7.

Q. Have you gone back and looked at the tape?
COACH KELLY: No. Have I gone back and looked at the tape? No. Because I think the UMass defense is a little bit different than Auburn's, and I know the New Hampshire offense is different than Oregon's.

Q. When you look at outside influences, clearly you totally ignore them. Was there a time in your life where you didn't? Was there some conversion, move away from that?
COACH KELLY: Honestly, before I got to Oregon, there were no outside influences because nobody really cared. I really didn't have to manage that part of my life (laughter). People weren't asking me a lot of questions.

Q. It is not on the forefront of your mind, but Luck coming back, do you have any thoughts on that?
COACH KELLY: Yeah, I threw up, to be honest with you. I love Andrew. I got a chance to meet him at the Heisman Trophy. He is an awesome kid. Just an awesome kid. I met him and LaMichael, and I got a chance to really spend time with him and LaMichael and Kellen, because I ran into them and we had a chance to chat.
Those three guys are special. They are what college football is all about. I think it is good for college football. I think he's a real smart, smart, smart kid, and so I'm sure it wasn't a whimsical decision.
The competitor in us wants to face him again. There is also a side of him that never wants to face him again. But he's awesome. He is such a good kid. He is such a great competitor.

Q. As an offensive guy, have you studied Coach Malzahn's scheme before this even?
COACH KELLY: Yeah, I have. And I went to Tulsa, I think, a year or two ago. He just was leaving to go to Auburn. I studied Gus when he was at Arkansas. And I studied Gus when he was at high school. I read his book. So I will study anybody, whether it is Dutch Meyer at TCU, invented the spread offense back in the '50s, or Knute Rockne running the Notre Dame box. If it is football information, I will try to read it.

Q. What do you think of him as a coordinator?
COACH KELLY: Gus is tremendous. All the accolades that he's gotten he deserves. He is as good a football coach on the offensive side of the ball in the country.

Q. You are an aggressive play caller. You have confidence in your team.
COACH KELLY: I think all play calling is determined by your personnel. If we didn't have LaMichael James and Kenjon Barner and Darron Thomas and all that, I would have been a conservative play caller. It is driven by the players that you have.
It is not -- you can't be a riverboat gambler if you are coaching the little giants, I can tell you that. You need to maybe milk the clock and see if you can be close in the fourth quarter, but we are allowed to be aggressive not only because of the talent we have on offense, but the talent we have on defense.

Q. Obviously this isn't the biggest thing. What would it mean to you personally to win a national championship? How much does that fulfill you or pride, whatever? How much does that mean to you personally?
COACH KELLY: I would be really excited, but I have never stated or had a goal that I have to do this or this to validate what I do. And I guarantee I will wake up Tuesday morning and figure out what the next challenge is if we have an opportunity to. I will not retire after Monday night.

Q. Tuesday is a new day?
COACH KELLY: Tuesday is a new day to win. You should write that down.

Q. What does having a healthy Kenjon in the back field, able to play he and LaMichael at the same time, what does that bring to you?
COACH KELLY: Big, big for us. He was really starting to hit stride. You watch how he started the season against New Mexico and then all of a sudden went down in the Washington State game. We missed him for a good portion of our Pac-10 stuff. You saw it in the Civil War where they both ran for 130. It would be like Auburn having two Cam Newtons which would be illegal, I think.
But I think when LaMichael comes out and you have a caliber of back like Kenjon that can go in and you can also split the carries and keeps LaMichael a little bit more healthy and fresh, you have four sets of legs at the running back spot. That will be huge.

Q. What's the biggest difference between the two of them?
COACH KELLY: There is not much. And that's in a good way. They are both fast, they are both got great change of direction. They both got great vision. They are both tough. They both catch the ball very well. It is really -- it is really I and I-A for those two kids. Especially the way Kenjon has been playing the last -- from the beaver game on and practicing that way.

Q. Was there a cultural adjustment for a New Hampshire guy when he goes to Oregon?
COACH KELLY: Is there a cultural adjustment? Yeah, they don't drive fast enough in Oregon. I can't get to work as quick as I would like to.
But the Northwest and the Northeast reminds me a lot -- there are some similarities.

Q. You took a tour overseas prior to the season. And you and I talked last in the spring or maybe in the fall camp about that trip and you talked about how you related to your players, that things like heat, things like long hours, those were issues that you saw over there that put it in different perspective. Was there anything more you took out that trip that has encouraged you to where you are at now?
COACH KELLY: There is a ton. If you have an opportunity to see the U.S. military work up close on a daily basis like we got to do for 12 days when I was in Germany, Bahrain, Iraq, on the deck of the USS Eisenhower, I was blown away by their professionalism, their enthusiasm for their job. They are just really -- how they wanted to do everything perfect. Because they have to. Because it is life and death in some situations and how much pride they take in what they do.
It was really inspirational for me to just see what that operation was like. When we went there, I think in my mind-set just to say thank you for what you guys do so we can play a national championship games and live our daily lives and not worry about what those guys go through. But to see them do that was really inspiring to me.

Q. Why do you have so much success recruiting in Texas?
COACH KELLY: Because there is a lot of players. I think there was 407 kids signed scholarships out of Texas last year. It was something around that number. So Texas, Texas A&M, they can't take everybody. I think the players are really, really well coached. There is a culture down there at the Texas high school level.
I got a chance to speak at the Texas State High School Coaches convention this summer and I was just blown away. I think there was 5,000 people on a Monday afternoon in July, and they came to listen to me, which really was bizarre. But they are very, very passionate about football in Texas. Very well coached at the high school level. And there is a lot of really, really good players down there.
It is just about finding the right fight when you go down there, and we have taken a couple kids each year and they have been -- Darron, LaMichael, Josh Huff, they have been impact players for us.

Q. A lot of those kids Texas overlooked?
COACH KELLY: I think people say that, but I understand -- Mack Brown can't recruit every kid in the state of Texas. And every coach, no matter where you are, and I don't care what program you are, your local state is going to say you overlooked somebody. So the same thing Mack hears we will hear in organization, You didn't take this kid, and the same thing I'm sure Gene hears in Alabama, you didn't take this kid.
You can't take every kid. We have scholarship limitations. Just do the math. 407 signed scholarships and you can sign 25 of them. Obviously he will miss a kid. Everybody misses a kid. You miss a kid in the NFL. How does Tom Brady go in the sixth round? I don't know.

Q. You had a long length of time between the last football game and this one. How did you develop a plan on how often to practice?
COACH KELLY: I met with Jimmy Radcliffe, our strength and conditioning coach, and we mapped out a plan.

Q. Was that based upon a recovery time for the athlete as bodies?
COACH KELLY: Jimmy is the guy I go to. How long do we practice, how do we not get out of shape, how much time should we give them off, how much recovery time should we have. We practice three days hard and take two days easy and work our whole schedule. So we sat down for about an hour one day and mapped out the whole schedule.

Q. What's it been like to have Nate Costa back? Has he been an inspiration?
COACH KELLY: It don't matter if Nate is in a uniform or not. He is a huge inspiration to this football program. Just to have nature with us, it is big for our players. They have a tremendous amount of respect for what Nate's gone through. He is everything you want in a college football player. I love the kid.

Q. Have you been around Gene Chizik much before this?
COACH KELLY: I never met Coach Chizik until I was at the Home Depot Awards.

Q. Anything that strikes you about him?
COACH KELLY: I'm a big, big Gene Chizik fan. He has had a tremendous career, obviously defensive coordinator at Texas, Auburn, and now back here and seeing what he has done in two years at Auburn is -- can't help but sit back and kind of say, wow, that guy is doing things that are pretty special. So I got all the respect in the world for Coach Chizik.

Q. How did you work out getting -- I know there is two hours in the afternoon where the guys are doing classes and study hall. How did that work out? All the guys are commenting how that's working.
COACH KELLY: It's kind of what they are supposed to do. They are student-athletes. So our winter term started last Monday. We knew our kids would go to school. It is similar in Eugene. We are practicing early and having class in the afternoon. It flows the same way it does during the school year. We practice in the morning during the school year and we are done at 11:00 every day and kids go to class. Same schedule down here that really we are back in Eugene except obviously we don't have things like that in Eugene on a morning -- on a Friday. Besides that, it has been practice and meetings in the morning and classes in the afternoon.

Q. What time do you all practice in the morning, regular season?
COACH KELLY: In the regular season, we practice from 9:00 to 11:00.

Q. Many D-I schools that do that?
COACH KELLY: I think there is a couple. But I don't know if there is many. Then our kids go to class.

Q. Any particular reason you do it?
COACH KELLY: There is about 27,000 reasons that we decided to change to that. There was class conflicts late in the afternoon. I never had a kid oversleep and miss practice, but I have had kids when I was an assistant coach oversleep and miss class. So it's very difficult to say, Coach, my alarm didn't go off, when you're leaving football practice and heading to academics.
I think our players are at our place every morning at 7:30, so they don't go out much at night because they have to be productive the next day. And ironically in the real world most things start at 7:30, 8:00. So we are preparing them for the future.

Q. Have you heard from guys who say how does this work for you?
COACH KELLY: I have had a few coaches call and talk about scheduling and why you did it. It takes a university that can cooperate. There was a lot of moving parts. Some guys have talked about and said that's a great idea but we couldn't get it done because of how classes are.
At Oregon, a lot of the classes were offered in the afternoon and the two years I was an assistant I think we were starting practice at 4:45. We weren't getting off the field until 6:45. Then they eat and you are asking them to study. It became a difficult process. We looked at it and said how can we look at this and flip it.

Q. Couple months ago you attended the funeral of Joe (indiscernible)?
COACH KELLY: I just saw it on T.V. I had a chance, like I said, in May to go on a USO tour to the Middle East to see our troops and to hear about a local kid that lost his life in Afghanistan. I just thought the least I could do is take an hour out of the day when I had a day off to go there and pay my respects and make sure that his family knew that people really cared about the sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice that Joe and his family made for his country.

Q. What was it about Darron that jumped out when you saw him in high school?
COACH KELLY: His athleticism. When he was recruited at a lot of different places for being a great athlete. We wanted an athletic quarterback. We want a quarterback that can throw, not a running back that can -- I mean, a quarterback can that run, not a running back that can throw. That's what we thought Darron was.

Q. Did you think his development would happen this fast to where he is at now?
COACH KELLY: People forget, he has been with us for three years. It is not just like he arrived. He came out of high school early. He enrolled in January of 2008. So he has been here for a while. To watch him get better and better each year is a real credit to him and how hard he has worked at the game.

Q. What would it mean to be to bring the first BCS championship to Oregon?
COACH KELLY: It would be right up there with Howard Hobson. He is a basketball coach that won the 1939 NCAA championship. So me, him and, Vin Lananna, Bill Bowerman, a couple guys got national championships in Oregon before me.

Q. First football BCS championship?
COACH KELLY: I would be fired up. (Smiling) I will tell you that. I haven't thought much besides that.

Q. Have you had a chance to reach out to Ray Tellier the past month or so?
COACH KELLY: In the past month, no. I talked to coach a couple months ago. But I haven't talked to -- we have been running around, planes, trains and automobiles recruiting and getting back to practice. I haven't talked to Coach T in about two months.

Q. Dion Jordan has made a few position switches. How has he adjusted?
COACH KELLY: He came in as a receiver. I think a lot of the position switches with Dion occurred because of his size. He just kept getting bigger and bigger, so we moved him into tight end, then we moved him from tight end to defensive end, and he has really flourished on the defensive side of the ball this year.

Q. Before you got to Oregon, what was the biggest game you had ever coached? How did that turn out for you?
COACH KELLY: Before I got to Oregon? We were in the national playoffs I think three of four straight years at New Hampshire. So we always won the first round and lost on the second round. Depends on which game I thought was bigger. I think the first round was bigger. We won.

Q. Have you ever seen Darron fazed or rattled at any point this year?
COACH KELLY: In a game?

Q. Well, in any situation. But, first off, in a game?
COACH KELLY: In a game, no.

Q. Does that surprise you just a little bit based on his inexperience level?
COACH KELLY: No. I watched him come off the bench as a true freshman against Boise State and throw for 203 yards and three touchdowns. Great part about that is he didn't know what he didn't know. He came out and started winging it. I would ask him what the coverage was. He would say, I have no idea.

Q. Suddenly kids know what they don't know or realize it is a big situation. It seems like he doesn't get there?
COACH KELLY: Darron has never been that guy. He has never been that way.

Q. You guys have done pretty much everything the same this week as you have done -- or this 38 days, whatever it is. The one difference isn't you haven't had any media in after practices?
COACH KELLY: Our kids have to go to class. We are on a time constraint. We have to leave Pinnacle High School and head back to campus.

Q. No assistant coaches?
COACH KELLY: We are hustling to watch film because we don't have any film out of practice. We are hustling back because we've got to get our filmed watched while those kids are in class because they we have meetings. I know the media is up in arms about it. It is right up there with who shot Kennedy. The fact that our kids have to actually go to class this week has been a phenomenon that I think has really -- it kind of makes me chuckle a little bit. But I'm proud that we had 58 kids that had a 3.0 last term, so we are hoping we can get more than 58 this term. So we are going to really push the academics.

Q. If you play in a January 1st game --
COACH KELLY: If you played in a January 1st game, we actually met with the media after practice. So there is a kind of -- if you can correlate those two things, when we don't have school, we meet with you after practice. When we didn't have school, when we were in Eugene, we met with everybody after practice.

Q. Nothing to do with the game itself?
COACH KELLY: It is all about the game. It is a conspiracy theory.

Q. Do you feel really bad about being not able to meet with us?
COACH KELLY: I wish we had this every day. Every day we would come out and have Raisin Bran and come here. I'd be fired up.

Q. We could do that.
COACH KELLY: I know we could. That was tongue in cheek. I don't mind this. I also think there is a point in time where -- I don't know how many times we can be asked the same question over and over.
I think you guys are the same way. We would like to play the game. And I know 14 days from today we are going to play it, so we're fired up. Or what seems like 14 days.

Q. Earlier on in your life, what made you, what drew you to being --
COACH KELLY: Are you writing a book?

Q. I seriously am, yes, as long as you win.
COACH KELLY: I'm coaching a football team. We got a game on Monday night. My intrinsic motivation from that, it starts with (indiscernible). It goes from there.

Q. Do you think your kids being in class has helped with their focus, taking a couple hours taking their mind off the game, thinking about something else for a couple hours instead of the game?
COACH KELLY: Good question. And I hope when they are in class they are not thinking about the game. (Smiling).
I don't know. You can ask them that. Everything we talk about is getting into a rhythm and doing the same thing repetitively and developing discipline and structure and habit in their lives. Obviously they were probably better in class yesterday than they were in Monday.
But it is one of those things. And I talked to our players all the time. You cannot be a selective participant. You can't pick and choose what you would like to do. We can't do it in life. We can't do it in the real world, so we are not going to be able to do it here. To be a member at the University of Oregon, to be a student-athlete at any institution in college football, you got to go to class.

Q. You said you the same questions were being asked over and over. Is there any question that you haven't been asked?
COACH KELLY: I didn't put any expectations on any questions coming in here. So I can't answer that question of, geez, I can't believe they didn't ask me that.

Q. Is that because you don't expect much from us?
COACH KELLY: I expect all from you, so I'm ready for everything, the Pythagorean theorem, whatever, fire it at us. Let's go.

Q. What kind of look is Daryle Hawkins giving you?
COACH KELLY: As good as you can. You can't simulate Cam Newton in practice. But nobody can. You have to get our scout players, no matter who you are, whether you are Arkansas or you are trying to be Terrelle Pryor or Ohio State trying to be Ryan Mallett. No one has a scout quarterback that's going to simulate who the best player in the country is going to be.
So Daryle is a competitor and he has taken his job very seriously. And he has done as good a job as he can. But until you actually get in the game and see that Cam's 60 pounds heavier and 2 inches taller, it is what it is.

Q. Do you get a sense of getting off on it? They are calling him Cam now. He is kind of dressing like him. Have you heard this?
COACH KELLY: No.

Q. He wears his sleeves and the wrist bands and taking on his mannerisms?
COACH KELLY: He's good. Good. He is trying to do it all. Daryle's awesome. I'm really -- he is a great kid. He is fun to be around.

Q. He brings up a good point, him, Spencer Paysinger, some other guys had very few offers and become major contributors to this team. Why have you been able to do that?
COACH KELLY: I mean, it is just college football. College football is about three things. It is about acquiring talent, retaining talent and developing talent. And I think we do an unbelievable job at developing talent at Oregon and they had done that before I got there, too.
I think we got a system in place for developing talent that you can find kids that are maybe not ready made their first year but you had a chance to redshirt them and develop them and all of a sudden Pays's situation is he was a 190-pound wide receiver. He is now a 230-pound linebacker. It was a matter of him getting more mature physically. He had a mind-set, a passion for playing the game that you are looking for.

Q. Were you a good football player?
COACH KELLY: Was I? I was a ham and egger. I loved the game, though.

Q. What did you play?
COACH KELLY: I got moved around. I played wide receiver and ended up at defensive back.

Q. Talked to Coach Rad and one of the things he said won him over toward you, he respects you, is that you were very adamant about asking the people who had been at Oregon what works, what doesn't work, what should we keep, traditions, things along those lines. What were some of the things that you threw out, what were some of the things that you kept?
COACH KELLY: I think when I took over I just needed to kind of immerse myself. So I met with everybody, whether it was compliance, athletic training, equipment room, not being the head coach, I didn't -- I didn't know how our equipment room worked nor did I care when I was the offensive coordinator. I had a pair of clean socks to go out to practice, I was a happy guy. I didn't know what the operation was.
All I ever asked, when I took over the program we had just won ten games and won the Holiday Bowl. So obviously I wasn't going to say, all right, let's throw this all out. They have been doing things right a long time before I ever got there. The only question I ask is how would things work and I want to know why and the only answer I don't want to have is "because that's the way we've always done it." Give me the specific reason. If the specific reason -- there was a lot of times, that makes sense we will continue. And there were other things I said let's change it.
The other question I asked all those people is if you were in charge, what would you change? And give me some feedback on that. Then I formulated what our system was going to be like.

Q. Obviously through the Bowl preparation, a lot of young guys have gotten a lot of represents. Who sticks out among a bunch of young guys on your team?
COACH KELLY: Who sticks out?

Q. Redshirts, freshmen.
COACH KELLY: Tony Washington has played really well for us recently. Anthony Anderson has done a great job. Isaac Remmington did a really good job trying to simulate Auburn's defensive front, Derrick Malone is a guy that has done some nice work for us. Those are a couple names off the top of my head.

Q. Can you talk a little bit about what Cliff Harris means to your defense and how he could potentially impact the game with his punt returns?
COACH KELLY: Yeah, Cliff's, you know, one of our good defensive backs. But I think everybody talks about Cliff being this, that and the other things maybe because he is loquacious and all those other things. I believe our best defensive back is Talmadge Jackson. And you can ask the Pac-10 coaches, because they voted Talmadge First Team. I think Cliff gets a lot of balls thrown his way because a lot of people don't throw the ball at Talmadge.
But Cliff's maturity as he has grown has been tremendous. Where he was in fall camp to where he is now, I'm really excited and hopefully he's the type of kid that somehow is always around the ball and can make plays and hopeful he is making the right plays and we are capitalizing on it.

Q. Does the attitude that he takes sort of rub off on others in terms of just his aggressiveness?
COACH KELLY: Yes and no, and sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes that's a bad thing. Because I don't think if you were a deep third corner and you are playing really aggressive and trying to make a tackle at the line of scrimmage is always the right thing to do.
He has done a better job as a season went along of understanding what his role is and how he fits into the thing and it is a total team defense in terms of what we do. And it is not a one-person defense.

Q. Darron Thomas developed in any way that he exceeded your expectation?
COACH KELLY: Now, I thought DT would be special. The great thing about Darron, he hasn't changed no matter how successful he has been or what's gone on with him. He comes out to work every day. He has got the same attitude, the same kind of mind-set and I have been really impressed with that. That's what he has been like since he got to our place.

Q. Did he pick up things quicker than you thought?
COACH KELLY: I think people are -- he has been with us for three full years now. So it is not like they just arrived on the scene. He just arrived on the scene because he is playing the season, he enrolled early out of high school. He enrolled in our place in 2008 so he has been with us for a while.

Q. What in his personality led you to believe that he would progress so quickly?
COACH KELLY: He has been a level-headed kid. Not really up, not really down. I think he is a steady and calming influence on his team. That's what his personality has been.

Q. Any danger of overconfidence for him? He seems like such a --
COACH KELLY: No, he is actually a real quiet guy. He doesn't -- he is not a talker. He is also not concerned with own personal statistics. All he wants to do is win.

Q. You talked about developing players. How does Boseko fit into that and how good can this kid be?
COACH KELLY: I think Boseko can be outstanding for the impact he has had on our defense as a redshirted freshman. He has been tremendous.

Q. Any surprise given his background, where he came from?
COACH KELLY: No. Because he went to high school in south Eugene. We knew all about him. He was a local kid. He moved back up to Canada for his senior year. We knew about Bo when he was a local high school kid the whole time.

Q. Zac Clark and some of the other guys on defense said the unit has grown since the Rose Bowl and the problems they had with Terrelle Pryor and they have matured. What do you think about that? Do you agree with the growth in the defense, and what do you see coming into this game?
COACH KELLY: We'll see. I think our problem wasn't schematically in the Rose Bowl. It was that we couldn't tackle him. We had a lot of shots at Terrell and we couldn't get him down to the ground.
All the credit to Terrelle in how he played and how he performed. He kept drives alive with his feet but he also threw the football. I think our defensive as a whole is better than a year ago. The statistics will bear that out.
As a group they are playing better.

Q. Do you see this being a similar situation where you have to get Cam?
COACH KELLY: I hope not because we lost last year. I hope it is not similar to last year.

Q. As far as trying to tackle him?
COACH KELLY: Oh, yeah. You are going to have to get everybody around him and try to rally to the ball. Obviously Auburn's offense is different than Ohio State's offense.
So the similarities end with just their physical presence in terms of how big they are and trying to tackle him and get him down to the ground and how fast and elusive they are also.

End of FastScripts

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