UPDATE 3:10pm (Joey Vizzi): First, the main news: multiple sources have confirmed that Chip Kelly has accepted the job in principle. But there is a holdup.
Throughout the time in which Kelly has been unemployed, he’s kept a running list of assistant coaches he would want to bring along with him to his next head coaching job, wherever he would be. That way, when he accepted the job, he could then run through his list and assemble his staff within a day or two- which with the newly introduced early signing period this year becomes critical.
The University is now in the process of vetting each and every one of these assistants,
much like they did with Kelly. I do not have names of the assistant coaches at this time, but logic indicates that at least some of them were at Oregon while the NCAA violations occurred, hence the need to vet them.
The deal is still not signed as of yet because Kelly wants to be assured that he can fill his entire staff with his hand picked guys. That indicates that no current assistants, with the possible yet unlikely exception of JaJuan Seider, will be retained.
But the bottom line is this:
at this point, the only way Florida does not hire Chip Kelly is if the University receives negative results in its vetting process of his wish list of assistant coaches, will not allow Kelly to bring one or more of them on as an assistant, and if this disagreement happens in a fashion that pisses Kelly off so much that he decides he doesn’t want to coach under this administration.
Now he is reporting this update....pretty detailed at that. Is he really a fraud? This sounds believable to me, but I don't have any street cred myself.