Jim Mora and Chip Kelly ended up swapping jobs

The former UCLA coach will join ESPN, where the new UCLA coach was last year.

Chip Kelly was hired as UCLA’s head coach in November, about a week after the Bruins fired Jim Mora. Kelly was previously working with ESPN’s college football crew, primarily working within a studio role at the network.

As for who’s going to take over for Kelly, ESPN announced that Mora will more or less fill Kelly’s role in 2018:

ESPN has signed long-time football coach Jim Mora as a college football studio analyst, primarily to appear on ESPN2 studio coverage each Saturday, and additional college football centric programming this season. Mora will appear alongside fellow college football analyst Emmauel Acho, who has signed a new multi-year contract and will transition from Longhorn Network’s Texas GameDay to ESPN’s college football programming.

Kelly’s studio work was also ESPN2, but he helped with additional NFL coverage, too.

Mora has been doing some TV work since he was let go at UCLA — ahead of the NFL draft he had various appearances on NFL Network, mostly to talk about his former QB Josh Rosen.

What’s even more ironic? This isn’t the first time these two coaches have found themselves crossing very similar paths — Mora was fired from UCLA on his birthday. Kelly was hired by UCLA on his. They’ve also been fired from multiple NFL head coaching jobs, too. Kelly, most recently, was fired by the San Francisco 49ers last January, and Mora was fired from the Seattle Seahawks in 2009.

After this many weird similarities between the two, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them both wind up as motivational speakers or something, tbh.