The text message reached Chip Kelly’s phone this month, with one UCLA loss down and two to go amid the Bruins’ worst start to a football season in 47 years.
The words were familiar to the UCLA coach. Kelly had used that expression while he was at Oregon to explain a team’s imperceptible growth similar to that of the Giant timber bamboo.
“If you water [this type of] bamboo in the first year, nothing happens,” Kelly said late in the 2009 season. “If you water it in the second year, nothing happens. If you water it in the third year, nothing happens.