How'd Oregon uncover the best coach in football? The old Granite State pipeline, of course.

Eddie Robinson Award as national coach of the year, the first of many, many trophies on their way to Kelly's door on the heels of the first unbeaten, untied season in Duck history. Since Kelly was snapped up by then-coach Mike Bellotti as Oregon's offensive coordinator in 2007, his version of the spread option has paced the Pac-10 in total and scoring offense four years in a row, employing three different starting quarterbacks and four different 1,000-yard rushers.

In his first year as head coach, the Ducks won the Pac-10 outright and went to the Rose Bowl for the first time in 15 years; in his second year, they're headed to the BCS Championship Game.

What was Chip Kelly doing at the start of 2007? Running the offense as an assistant at New Hampshire, then coming off a 9-4 season and its third straight defeat in the second round of the I-AA/FCS playoffs. He'd never coached above the FCS level, and never been a head coach on any level. American Football Monthly magazine knew who he was then, but outside the Northeast – that is, among the vast majority of major college football – almost no one else did. How did he get heeyah from theyah?

The natural way: Courtesy of a game in Salt Lake City that he had nothing to do with more than three years before he was hired. Nike CEO and Oregon mega-booster Phil Knight connected the dots in an interview with the Oregonian:

Q: How did Oregon target Kelly, then an assistant coach at the University of New Hampshire, as the next Oregon football coach?

Knight: Mike Bellotti figured that out. … Bellotti lost to Utah [in 2003*]. [Then-Utah head coach] Urban Meyer was running the spread [offense] – one of the early adopters of the spread. … Bellotti, when he saw that system, said, "We could use some of that."

Literally, maybe within a year or two later, he decided to put in a spread. ... He sent [then-Oregon offensive coordinator Gary Crowton] down to work with Urban Meyer. So he went down there and the offensive coordinator for Florida was Dan Mullen, who's now the head coach of Mississippi State . … Anyway, [Mullen]'s from New Hampshire. And he says, "The guy who really knows this stuff is Chip Kelly up at the University of New Hampshire."

So Crowton, when he came back he had some rough edges to the spread and he started calling Chip Kelly on Sundays saying, "This came up and I didn't quite know what to do with it." And Chip always had an answer. So, when LSU came and picked up Crowton, Bellotti knew he'd been talking to Chip Kelly, so he went to get Chip Kelly.

LSU fans who have watched Crowton's 55th, 112th and 92nd-ranked offenses in Baton Rouge the last three years will be shocked – shocked! – to learn that he once cribbed answers from the guy who later emerged as the most successful offensive mind in the sport. More proof that the "behind the scenes" reality is closer to the superficial version more often than you think.

Unfortunately, Knight refused to confirm the longstanding rumors that he has a direct line to the coaches' headsets to listen to play calls during games at Autzen Stadium. It would be the least they could do, really, considering he paid for the line, the headsets, the coaches and a good chunk of the stadium. Still, there's no substitute for hiring the right people.

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* The original article incorrectly lists the year of Oregon's loss to Utah as 2005, Meyer's first year at Florida. Oregon and Utah didn't play in 2005.
Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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