Players To Refund Fans After Epic Fail

Earlier this year, Oregon football head coach Chip Kelly reimbursed a disgruntled fan after the Ducks were beaten at Boise State. Tony Seminary sent Kelly and e-mail with an invoice of his expenses for his trip to Boise and asked for a refund after Oregon’s embarrassment, which included LaGarrette Blount’s cheap shot.

Kelly cut Seminary a check for $439.00.

English Premier League side Wigan Athletic are taking a page out of Coach Kelly’s playbook.

The Latics were buried 9-1 on Sunday away to Tottenham. Even non-soccer fans know in a sport where 2-1 is a scoring outburst, that nine is just ridiculous. Shit, Spurs striker Jermain Defore scored five times in the second half alone.

Tottenham’s nine goals tied the record for most in an EPL game. Defoe’s five tallies also equalled the EPL record for most goals in a game by one player.

Prior to Sunday’s flop, Wigan allowed an average of 1.8 goals through 12 matches this season.

The epic drubbing forced the team’s captain Mario Melchiot to promise Wigan’s players would refund the price of admission for any Wigan fan who travelled to London to watch the Latics get pasted.

“We feel as a group of players we badly let down our supporters (Sunday) and this is a gesture we have to make and pay them for their tremendous loyalty.

There’s not a lot else to say, just that as a group of professionals we were embarrassed by the way we performed. We feel it was below our standard and this is something we feel we owe to the fans.

Now we have to draw a line under the game, focus completely on training this week and bounce back on Saturday. We are professionals, we will take it on the chin and move on, but it’s important that we do not take our supporters for granted.”

Wigan was allocated 565 tickets for the match.

Tickets ranged in price from $45.53 for an adult to $24.43 for fans under 16-years old.

So the maximum reimbursement would be $25,724.45. That’s if all 565 tickets were sold (they weren’t) and if all the fans were able-bodied adults between the ages of 16-65.

Still, the Wigan players are probably looking at shelling out roughly $15,000, and in this economy every little bit helps. And any form of goodwill couldn’t hurt Wigan’s support. The Latics’ attendance has ranked last in the EPL in each of the last three seasons, and is once again at the bottom of the heap, averaging 17,781 fans a game at home.

It’s nice to see some accountability for an absolute “shite” performance.

Perhaps I should write Virginia McCaskey an e-mail, er I mean Pony Express mailed letter. (The likelihood the Bears’ 86-year old matriarch is computer-literate is about equal to her team’s chances of making the playoffs this season.)

I want a refund for the No. 8 Cade McNown jersey I bought in 1999 when Chicago took the UCLA star and Playboy-chaser with the No. 12 overall pick.

I’m serious. That guy friggin’ sucked. He made Craig Krenzel look like a viable option.

Enough said. Ah, and how fondly I remember Joe Theismann remarking about how McNown was the best of the 1999 NFL Draft QB class, which featured Donovan McNabb and Daunte Culpepper. Though to Joe’s credit, McNown despite how crappy he is, is probably the fifth-best QB from that draft, behind the aforementioned McNabb and Culpepper, second-round pick Shaun King and the Wonderlic-challenged Aaron Brooks.

I think a refund is justified.