Eagles' Chip Kelly not giving press a pass

THE MOST interesting part of Chip Kelly's hour-long session with reporters last month was something that won't make it into many accounts of the interview.

Somehow the writers and Kelly got into friendly banter about the Philadelphia media and fanbase. To us, the reason the Eagles have an unusually large media corps is pretty obvious - this is a huge market where people care more about their NFL team than anything else in sports, or maybe even in their lives. There isn't another market this size whose passion compares, except maybe Dallas.

The New York market is split, and baseball is still bigger than football there. Baseball also carries more heft in Chicago and New England, and probably in San Francisco, where pro sports just don't produce a Northeastern-style fervor. Houston has an expansion team.

Those of us on the Eagles beat would say the Birds are covered the way they are covered because covering the Eagles in Philadelphia is like covering the Vatican in Rome.

The Eagles' coach, who will open his third training camp when players report to NovaCare on Saturday, flat-out rejects this premise. Chip Kelly believes he has a huge media throng following him not because of the extraordinary depth of fan interest here, but because . . . well, apparently for no real good reason, just because we want to be a pain in his butt.

I asked Kelly, now that he's been here a while, if he sees a difference between the way fans look at the team here and the way the teams are perceived in Oregon or New Hampshire.

Kelly said it is different. Asked how, he said: "I just think there's more people sitting in a room writing about them. I would think that's the biggest difference."

Asked if he thought that difference was with media or with fans, Kelly said: "the media."

Asked if the amount of media doesn't reflect the fanbase, Kelly said: "I don't think so. So we have five times more fans than any team in the National Football League?"

"Kansas City still has a passionate fan base, and people talk about them having a great fan base," said Kelly, in pointing out that only one K.C.-area reporter attended the NFL meetings in March. At the AFC coaches' breakfast, Andy Reid ended up talking mostly to two dozen or more folks from Philly outlets who came over to check in with the man who coached the Birds for 14 seasons. At the NFC breakfast the next day, Kelly was besieged by more than 50 media members, many from national outlets, because it was only the second time Kelly had been available since the end of the 2014 season, and because he made huge, headline-grabbing moves this offseason, such as trading LeSean McCoy and Nick Foles.

According to the most recent government assessment of Metropolitan Statistical Areas, Philadelphia is the nation's sixth-largest market. Kansas City is 29th.

"I'm just not buying the amount of reporters to the amount of fans," Kelly said. "Dallas has more fans. They have 90,000 at a game. [Actually, AT&T Stadium's capacity is 80,000.] No one holds a candle to you guys at media events."

Maybe team president Don Smolenski should take Chip aside and explain about the Eagles' season-ticket waiting list, and the fact that they purposely made Lincoln Financial Field smaller than the largest venues, for the sake of atmosphere. Also, Dallas decision-maker Jerry Jones will pretty much talk to anybody, anytime, so although there was a large Dallas media contingent at the meetings, Jones' appearance and that of Cowboys coach Jason Garrett carried less urgency for those reporters.

Kelly is a very smart man. The fact that he sees a giant throng of reporters and thinks we're all there because we couldn't find anything better to do, or because the people who pay us like to waste money, is just amazing, but it reflects a larger issue.

This is a guy who started Skypeing a traditional weekly appearance before boosters at Oregon because he didn't want to be bothered to go to the event, 90 minutes away, in Portland. The boosters could like this or lump it, and if it affected the size of the checks they wrote, well, that wasn't his problem.

One hallmark of the Eagles' Kelly era so far is the big decision - a signing, cut, trade - that goes unexplained for weeks because Kelly isn't scheduled to talk to reporters right away and sees no need to clarify anything for fans.

"I'm not trying to send a message to anybody," Kelly said earlier in the June session with reporters. "I'm just trying to coach our team. Whatever the message that gets out is whatever you guys write [is] that message. That doesn't bother me."

So he has no interest in crafting a message?

"No. What's there to craft? Just do your job. There's nothing to craft. I think if you're thinking about crafting, you're not spending enough time on your job."

Asked about satisfying the interest of the ticket-and-merchandise-buying public in who he is, Kelly said: "I look at it from the Navy SEALs point of view, 'I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor do I seek recognition for my actions.' "

This was a little more than a month before a Washington Post reporter uncovered the fact that Kelly, long depicted as never having been married, actually was married for seven years in the '90s to a woman who now lives in the D.C. area.

Of course, not understanding or embracing the passion of the Philly market isn't going to prevent Kelly from building a good team and winning the Super Bowl. It isn't a coaching flaw, and some fans will take the attitude that it therefore doesn't matter.

But it might be worth pondering whether an Eagles coach with Kelly's perspective can really thrive and feel at home here, long-term.

College towns tend not to be media hubs.

Blog: ph.ly/Eagletarian