Pac-12 Football: Chip Kelly Reminds Us UCLA, Cal Not Part of CSU System

One thing UCLA coach Chip Kelly has had to tell people is that Cal and UCLA are part of the UC System, not the Cal State University system.

This came up Tuesday night after California State University Chancellor Timothy White announced that the CSU plans to cancel most in-person classes in the fall.

When asked to comment on that issue on Wednesday during a Pac-12 websinar, Kelly said, "Well, first off, we're not part of Cal State. That was a big question. I had to talk to coaches on our own staff. We're in the UC system, not the Cal State system."

Kelly returned to the subject later in the webinar.

"The State sytem and the UC system are different, so when that came out last night, I think there were some people that thought that affected both Cal and us, but we're not in that system; we're in a different system.

"We're scheduled to play [CSU school] San Diego State in game three. Would that affect that? I really don't know."

If people in California are hazy about the difference between the California State University sytem and the University of California system, just think how confused folks elsewhere in the United States are regarding the distinction.

Cal, of course, is tehnically the University of California, Berkeley, which has its share of distinctive labels. Arizona State coach Herm Edwards, who attended Cal in 1972 and 1974 before transferring to San Diego State, even alluded to the hairstyles of his college era when he joked about not being able to get a haircut recently.

"I'm back at Cal Berkeley again," he said. "I'm also almost 6-3 again."

Edwards was back to the present with regard to his thoughts about how the pandemic and social distancing has affected recruiting.

"A lot of these young men are worried maybe in their area there might not be high school football [in 2020]," Edwards said. "So now kids are committing a little early, because they might not have senior films if there's not football."

A Sports Illustrated story and this accompanying video confirm the fact that there have been many more early commitments:

Cal has already had seven players commit for the class of 2021, which has helped the Bears to a top-20 ranking nationally among recruiting classes.

Listen to this audio of the comments of Edwards, Oregon State coach Jonathan Smith and Kelly regarding recruiting in the age of social distaning:

(Story continues below)

The three coaches basically corroborated what Pac-12 coaches had said on Tuesday, that six weeks is the minimum amount of preparation time players would need before playing their first game.

But Kelly added a caveat:

"I think it could be done earlier, if our strength and conditioning coaches can get their hands on them earlier," Kelly said. "So if our strength and conditioning coaches have them for a couple of weeks before we got them, then I think you could do it in four weeks, that's what they do at the other divisions. So the working time would be six weeks, but if you say, do we want a six-week training camp? That's not what we're asking for. We're asking for the strength and conditioning coaches to get them up to speed so you can mimimize soft-tissue injuries and get them going. And I think there's a push for that."

You can listen to the audio on that subject here:

At the end of the webinar, things started to go off the rails, as you can tell from this last audio:

Follow Jake Curtis of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53

Click the "follow" button in the top right corner to join the conversation on Cal Sports Report on SI. Access and comment on featured stories and start your own conversations and post external links on our community page.

Add us as a preferred source on Google