The 2026 season will be the third college football season without Chip Kelly for the UCLA Bruins yet there’s still new stories coming out from Kelly’s time in Westwood. On the Bent Outta Shape Podcast, former Bruin defensive back Quentin Lake shared the most recent story earlier this week.
Lake appeared on the podcast, which is hosted by a pair of former UCLA Bruins, Eric Kendricks and Anthony Barr, and revealed that Chip Kelly was receiving a bonus based on his players’ grade point average.
UCLA giving Kelly financial motivation to make sure that his players are meeting the standard in the classroom makes sense, but Lake revealed that Kelly may have been helping juice the numbers a bit.
“He would get, I think, a certain amount of money for every
kid that got above a 3.0 GPA,” Lake said. “So he brought in all these walk-ons, and I’m just like ‘Yo, where’s the LA talent?’ because when he was at Oregon you had like De’Anthony Thomas.”
This Chip Kelly story is CRAZY 😭 pic.twitter.com/eDuqnqS7uz
— Bent Outta Shape (@BentOuttaShape_) August 6, 2026
The results weren’t all that pretty for UCLA. Kelly posted a mediocre record of 35-34 with the Bruins over six seasons before choosing to depart to accept an offensive coordinator role with Ohio State. After winning the national championship with the Buckeyes, Kelly headed back to the NFL where he didn’t make it through a full season with the Las Vegas Raiders as an offensive coordinator before being fired.
UCLA football is hoping to have a revival under new head coach Bob Chesney but the program is still recovering from Kelly’s tenure with the team.
This article originally appeared on UCLA Wire: Former Bruin discusses Chip Kelly's unusual bonus with UCLA football
