A noble, refreshing offer from Oregon’s Kelly

It's a good thing Chip Kelly doesn't manage the Chicago Cubs. Or coach the Detroit Lions. Or produce movies starring Rob Schneider.

Kelly might feel compelled to offer paying customers his car, home, retirement savings and perhaps even a year's worth of free boxing lessons from LeGarrette Blount.

Kelly instead coaches the Oregon football team. Well, he does today. If you have seen former coach and now athletic director Mike Bellotti on the sidelines during games, you can be assured it's just a matter of time before an ego the size of Eugene decides it's best to again control things.

You know, for the good of the program and all.

Until then, it's obvious Kelly feels a responsibility not to produce a product that causes Oregon fans to begin thinking it wouldn't be all that bad rooting for the team from Corvallis once every few years.

It was learned this week that Kelly sent a disgruntled Oregon alum a check for $439 after the fan, who attended a season-opening loss at Boise State and was disappointed with the Ducks' performance and postgame sucker punch thrown by Blount, e-mailed the coach his feelings and attached an invoice for travel expenses.

(If it's me, I send the request to Phil Knight and hope his secretary only notices the words "Oregon football" and mistakenly added three or four zeroes to the check.)

In the e-mail to Kelly, Tony Seminary, an Oregon season-ticket holder and Portland resident, wrote:

''I was so angry with the game (even before the postgame melee). I am sending you an invoice for my trip to Boise. The product on the field Thursday night is not something I was at all proud of, and I feel as though I'm entitled to my money back for the trip. Please see my invoice attached in this e-mail. I will happily send along receipts if need be.''

It is something at one time or another we all have wanted to write. Many have. I actually have been paid to watch UNLV football the past several years, but if not, just the outside chance at witnessing another postgame rant from Mike Sanford like the one at Iowa State in 2006 would be worth double the price of admission.

Sports fans are an insufferable, illogical and infatuated bunch. We are insane in a mostly constructive way, and then you have the real loons from Philadelphia.

Our favorite teams might as well have a place set for Thanksgiving dinner and a present under the tree at Christmas. They are viewed that much part of the family. And when they disappoint us to what we consider unacceptable levels, we tend to respond in unreasonable ways.

Or, in the case of Seminary, fairly creative ones.

I don't know why Kelly chose to send the money. He wrote Seminary back, requested an address and the check arrived a few days later.

The coach wasn't talking about it on a conference call Tuesday, saying he had no comment and that his team was preparing to play California.

I assume he was either uncomfortable with the situation or wanted to keep things short for fear Bellotti was in the film room with players breaking down the previous week's game.

On the face of it, Kelly's gesture was noble and refreshing, two words rarely assigned college football coaches. Seminary appreciated it so much, he returned the check to Kelly with a thank-you note.

In the end, it really wasn't about the money.

But you can imagine the response from fans of other schools, and can read many of them at www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com.

Those who for decades have followed Notre Dame and Alabama and Ohio State and Boston College and those hapless Detroit Lions and so on suddenly think they are owed a stipend for any moment of misery.

I would assume New Jersey Nets fans now might have a variety of demands available to them once the team begins losing this season, given prospective new owner and billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has been known to send friends gorgeous Russian women as presents. Let's see, a few hundred bucks or a Natalia Vodianova look-alike ... Tough one.

What would a money-back guarantee mean for Cubs fans? How do you put a price on so much anguish and disappointment? What would be acceptable payment, daily revenues of all retail along the Magnificent Mile for, say, five years?

Chip Kelly probably didn't make any friends in the coaching fraternity when the story surfaced. I can see Nick Saban checking with attorneys on how best to contest any such request.

But what Kelly should have made is friends with thousands and thousands of fans.

Of those from Oregon and places far beyond.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He also can be heard weeknights from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on "The Sports Scribes" on KDWN (720 AM) and www.kdwn.com.