A salty Chip Kelly, coach of the Oregon Ducks, confirmed that the temperatures inside the team's indoor practice facility were turned up to the mid-90s to prepare the team for its game at Arizona State Saturday night.
The Ducks did the same before their trip to Tennessee, and the temperatures were cooler in Knoxville than in practice so they were unaffected.
"We've got to practice in it because we have to play in it," Kelly said. "We're just trying to simulate the situation we're going into."
Kelly isn't a man of many words, nor many quality words from a journalist's perspective at that. During his weekly news conference Tuesday morning, he offered little more than a sentence as a response to several questions. Asked by a national college football writer to comment about the Boise State strength of schedule issue and how that might also impact the Ducks should they run the table. Kelly said "Naw, it doesn't draw me out. I'm getting ready to play Arizona State."
As for the Sun Devils, Kelly said the ASU defense is really well-coached and plays "extremely hard." The offense, he said, is completely different from last year's with Noel Mazzone as new offensive coordinator.
"It's like comparing apples to oranges," Kelly said.
Finally Kelly was asked about the stress of being a football coach, in light of Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio's heart attack after his team beat Notre Dame on a trick play last weekend.
"I don't think of it as stress," Kelly said of his job. "I don't think of coaching as a job. It's a lifestyle."
Kelly summed up his pastime as a time to "hang out with some great friends and we yuk it up a lot."