This week it came out in the news that a business man from Portland sent a letter to the University of Oregon football coach asking him to pay for his travel expenses to Boise. About 3 weeks ago Oregon played awful against Boise St. (and even managed to pick a fight or two), and this man felt like the coach owed him the money he had spent to go to the game.
This isn’t even the crazy part of the story. The crazy part is that the coach sent the man a check from his personal account in the amount of $439.
You might be thinking this is just one huge publicity stunt. It actually isn’t though. Chip Kelly (the coach) has refused to talk about this and no one has said how the story even came out.
Couple of thoughts on this:
- I really hope that this doesn’t become a precedent in sports. Coaches already have enough pressure to perform in college and pro sports.
- I wonder if this could ever happen at a church….Example: Say a church passes the offering plate/bucket before the pastor’s sermon for the morning. And then say the the sermon is awful. It is obvious to someone that the pastor did a poor job so they ask for their money back that they gave in the offering. I can see this being a positive thing. Some pastors need a kick in the butt to work harder, some don’t.
- I’m mostly joking about point #2.
Here is an exerpt of the news story:
Tony Seminary is a 1996 graduate of the University of Oregon and a season ticket holder for the Ducks football team. He attended the Boise State game, and witnessed the loss to the Broncos and LeGarrette Blount’s PunchGate up close and personal. After the game, Seminary wrote an email to Chip Kelly, and did what you may have dreamt of doing after traveling to watch your team put in an embarrassing performance on the road: he asked for a refund, and attached an invoice bureaucrat-style. From the original email:
I was so angry with the game (even before the post-game 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 email. I will happily send along receipts if need be.
Unlike most fans, he actually wrote this up and sent it. Unlike most coaches, Chip Kelly responded with a personal check written to one Anthony Seminary.
We called Seminary, who runs an IT company in the Portland area. He happily confirmed the story.
“I wasn’t happy with the team’s performance, and it just left a bad taste in my mouth. I think most of the Duck contingent felt the same way, and that was even before the post-game shennanigans. I just felt like I needed to reach out to Coach Kelly and give him my two cents about how I felt about the performance.”
Seminary then emailed Kelly, and did what most fans only talk about doing. He attached an invoice in jest detailing his expenses from the game.
“The invoice was sent in jest. I run a business and I invoice customers, and I have an invoice at my disposal. I just took all the company information and made it out to Tony Seminary, Incorporated. It was definitely sent in jest. Sometimes you send an email, and you just feel better after you sent it? That’s kind of how it felt.”
Then the jesting bluff got called by Chip Kelly.
“When Chip replied and said ‘What is your address?’–that was all he said–I replied with my address, and a few days later I had a check in the mail.”
Seminary was understandably dumbfounded by the response.
“As a sales guy, it’s really hard to shut me up. When I received that check, I was literally speechless.”
The check came from one Charles Kelly, and was made out in the amount of $439 to one Anthony Seminary, the exact amount listed on the invoice for the Boise trip. Here it is:
Seminary did not cash the check, though he did make copies. (He’ll probably frame them.) The original went back to Kelly, along with a thank you note and a business card.
“I think of Coach Kelly as a totally different person now, I have a different bond with him now thanks to what happened. Let’s just say he lost every game as an Oregon coach. You would never hear me calling for his head. It just wouldn’t happen. The guy showed an incredible amount of class”
“I now know why his kids would run through a wall for that guy, because who does what he did, right? That is simply amazing.”
Agreed in total. (For the record, the Oregon media relations department will neither confirm nor deny this, as they “don’t deal with dot-com,” and don’t want to comment on Kelly’s private dealings with fans.)
Seminary would also like to stop a run on football-related invoices peppering the Oregon Athletic department, even if Phil Knight and his mountains of gold bullion could fund the program for the next century. Creating a market for football-based refunds is not and never was what this was about for Seminary.
“If you go down to Autzen Stadium and we lose by three points, please don’t start sending invoices down there. The intent is to show how much of a class act that guy is. What he did is simply amazing, and blew me away.”
“He could lose every game 50-0 and he’d still be my coach, our coach, through thick and thin.”
Chip Kelly, a man of his word, and like his bank, “Nice. Remarkably nice.”
You can read the full news story (along with a video) here.
