Moments after Jim Mora was fired, talk gathered steam of Chip Kelly becoming the top candidate at UCLA.

But a prominent Los Angeles columnist, Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times, said as a guest on The Paul Finebaum Show that he didn’t see it happening. And one reason was because of UCLA basketball players being arrested for shoplifting in China.

“I don’t see if happening by any stretch of the imagination,” Plaschke said, who added that he was stunned that UCLA, which is “conservative,” made the Mora move during the season.

Plaschke said the thinking behind the firing was tied to the China incident, and the indefinite suspension of the players, which upset some donors.

“There’s a lot of people who threatened to pull money,” Plaschke said.

“That’s a great national story, but people who know UCLA, number one, he’s got that baggage from Oregon, that show cause baggage,” Plaschke said of Kelly. “I know it wasn’t a terrible recruiting thing, but it is NCAA stuff going on. That’s the last thing this school needs again, in the wake of this China incident. You don’t need the NCAA breathing down your neck. They’ve always tried to be the school that kind of avoids that. … I also don’t see the school paying big money for him. The school had to pay $12 million to get rid of Mora, and that didn’t come from boosters. Boosters weren’t going to pony up for that, they were going to let it ride.”

Plaschke added that he thinks people have caught up to Kelly.