Chip Kelly owes LeGarrett Blount a lot this week because that whole mess has kept the focus off the Oregon offense. And in spite of all the copy written lately about the Ducks, I have seen nothing about the most compelling topic of the week:

What the hell happened, exactly, to the Oregon offense? Was it the play calling? Who was really calling the plays, anyway? Was it the offensive line? Bad reads by the quarterback? Poor preparation? Was Boise State THAT great on defense?

Folks, Oregon had no first downs — ZERO — in the first half Thursday against the Broncos. Portland State had one on its first series against Oregon State and was massively overmatched. How could such an offensive disaster of train wreck proportions have happened?

I haven’t seen any explanations out of the Oregon coaching staff yet. They’ve had days to look at the film, so what the hell happened?

And seriously, what’s your best guess?

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I thought I was there, in person, for the most embarrassing debut in history — that night when I stupidly agreed to do stand-up comedy at Harvey’s. Yes, that was embarrassing.

But what happened to the Oregon Ducks Thursday night in Boise? I can’t think of a pratfall worse than that. It was a nationwide pantsing.

The Chip Kelly Era could have ended at halftime and nobody would have complained. Uh, Mike Bellotti, we’ve got some extra hats, headphones and coaching shirts here — just muscle the little guy out of the way and take over, will you?

Who knows, Kelly may be this year’s Pac-10 Coach of the Year. He could end up in the Hall of Fame. But all I know is that on this important night, this first night of his head-coaching career, his team was nowhere near ready for this game. Not even close. They thoroughly got their asses kicked by a team full of players they wouldn’t even come close to recruiting, led by a little left-handed dart-throwing quarterback who had to choose between Idaho and Boise State when he got out of high school.

No first downs in the first half? That can’t happen. I mean, in the first half I would expect Portland State will stumble into a first down or two in Corvallis on Saturday. But I can’t recall a team opening a season with months to prepare for a game and being this uninspired, unprepared and unimaginative.

Seriously, with months to get ready for this game — a revenge game, at that – this is what you bring? No new wrinkles. No surprises. No focus. It was total panic in the second half, even after a touchdown scored with plenty of time left to rally — when the game plan was tossed out and the Ducks decided just to play bomb’s away, something they don’t do well. Still, after the game last year and this year — almost no respect for Boise State.

All of that while Kelly, painfully shown zillions of times by the ESPN cameras appearing uncomfortable on the Oregon sidelines. The guy seemed shy, timid and as if he was suffering from a serious case of stomach distress. And I guess, who could blame him?

Really, I thought all THAT was pretty embarrassing.

But then this fool LeGarrette Blount goes for a thug hat trick after the game — fighting the other team, his own team and (attempting to) fight fans in the stands. You stay classy, Oregon.

And think back to the game, a player this unstable, this crazy — he’s the guy the Ducks handed the ball to near their own goal line (oops, a safety trying to run sideways in the end zone) and on a critical fourth and one in the fourth quarter with the game on the line when he couldn’t muster enough power to pick up the needed yards. You wanted THIS man, this fruitcake, carrying the ball in critical situations?

So now, after a wretched loss and an embarrassment that Sportscenter will never tire of showing, Chip Kelly faces a very difficult benchmark in his coaching career just a week into his tenure. What is he going to do with this guy? Already, the appearance is that he has a team that is borderline out of control — he simply can’t allow Blount to ever go near his locker room again.

Frankly, if Blount ever plays one more down for this team, I will be appalled. He’s out of second chances, isn’t he? And please, Duck fans, I don’t want to hear ANYTHING about him being taunted by a Boise State player. Don’t even go there. He sucker punched the guy as BSU head coach Chris Peterson (folks, that guy and his staff absolutely mopped the floor with Kelly in this game) was hauling the player away.

And on top of that, he was squaring off with teammates, fans, cops — anyone in his path — in some sort of crazed frenzy. You don’t want this idiot on your team. Ever. And I’m not going to spend any appreciable time on this, but anyone who chided me for doubting the guy prior to the season owes me an apology. Not that I’ll get it, but seriously, some of those Duck fan sites were pretty nasty.

I’m not sure how much on-the-job training Kelly is going to need at Oregon but he better get ready quick. THAT was one serious flop Thursday night. And I have to say something to Oregon fans — this is no time to make excuses or alibis. This is no time for acting the fool.

It’s time to just keep your head down and mouth shut and hope it all passes quickly. Right now, I’d just keep those “Go Ducks” shirts in the closet. I can’t imagine wanting to associate with that mess.

Man, I still can’t really believe what I watched.

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OK, I’ve already said how I feel about the game — I have Oregon winning 42-28 and have said it on radio, television and in this blog, so there’s no escaping the prediction if I’m wrong.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t concerns about this game. And the No. 1 worry is that guy over on the sidelines for the Broncos, Chris Peterson. This man is a heck of a coach — maybe one of the best in the country. I can remember when he was an assistant around here, even then people were talking about him in reverential tones, predicting big things for him as a head coach.

I believe he should have been given consideration to become the head man at Oregon. I would be surprised if he didn’t think that, too. That, of course, provides special motivation for him in this game — as if he needs it. As long as he’s there, and as long as this game is so important to Boise State — it’s really their season — that’s something very big to worry about.

For me, too, I’d want to win the coin toss if I were the Ducks. And I wouldn’t defer my choice until the second half, either. I’d want the ball and I’d want my offense out there on the field to start the game.

I think it’s very important for Oregon to get established early. Get the running game going. Get control of the tempo. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Ducks are a little more conservative than usual early, too. It just makes sense to be cautious, take no big chances, try to use safe passes and lots of running to establish a lead and some sort of psychological edge.

Folks, if Oregon gets behind early, this may not be pretty. Particularly with the head coach, Chip Kelly, in his very first college game. Panic could set in at some point, if not by the coaching staff, by the players.

But don’t worry. I’m not backing off my prediction. I believe the Ducks have better talent. I think their quickness will be obvious and their depth will be apparent. They’ll win. But they better not take anything for granted.

They tried that last season and it didn’t work.

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I was going to wait a day to write this but I’m getting a little tired of talking about this game. It’s time to play, isn’t it?

You know, I still have a lot of reservations about a team going into a game this big with a head coach who has never been a head coach before. But Chip Kelly seems to have the complete respect of his players and I’m still going to follow my usual law of picking games: when all else fails, pick the team with the best talent.

I believe in this case, that’s the Ducks. Oregon is recruiting better players and better athletes than the Broncos, who are extremely well coached and profit from playing very few high-caliber teams each season. When they catch an elite Division I team, it’s usually a game they can point toward and spend multiple weeks preparing for — while marching past easier foes along the way.

You can talk all you want about Boise State’s home record and its long string of victories — but the point is, those were different teams with different players. The opponents were different. It’s ancient history.

You can talk about last season in Eugene, but I still see that game as something of an ambush. In spite of all the warnings, I don’t know that the Ducks took the Broncos seriously until it was too late. And I don’t think Oregon was settled as a team quite yet. What I’m saying is, the Ducks of later in the season would have beaten Boise State.

The Broncos also made a very big mistake in scheduling this game as the opener. They should have caught the Ducks in between key conference games that would have stolen their focus. They should not have laid those late hits on Oregon players last season — such things create a burning memory. And they should have waited a year or two before this game took place — so that many of the Oregon players who were embarrassed last season would have graduated.

The Ducks won’t overlook Boise State this time. And they’ve had plenty of time to prepare for the play action, the motion, the shifts and the gadget plays. When you remove all that stuff, it’s likely to come down to talent — and I’m sorry, I just can’t convince myself that the Broncos have the same level of skill that the Ducks have.

I make it 42-28, Oregon.

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I’ve always believed forced sportsmanship is not sportsmanship at all. It’s a show. A forced happy ending to a bad morality play.

I’ve hated it when I’ve seen high school teams, for years now, line up at the end of games and just robotically walk through a line absently slapping hands with their opponents after a game. Stupid. Meaningless. It’s all a joke.

Now, the NCAA is going to ask its football teams to shake hands PRIOR to games and the Ducks and Broncos will be among the first to test it out. I’m not worried about fights breaking out as teams do this, although I’ve heard that concern, particularly in games involving long-heated rivals. And I will tell you that forcing players into close contact moments after each team’s coach has spent 15 minutes in a locker room firing them up to knock each other’s block off isn’t exactly the most intelligent idea I’ve ever heard.

Mostly, I just think it’s so absurd to force handshakes out of people who don’t mean anything by it that it almost becomes a parody of sportsmanship.

I can remember the first college football game I ever watched, at then Multnomah Stadium, one of those Oregon-Washington games that was always transplanted to Portland each season because Multnomah was the biggest stadium in the state (young people won’t believe that what is now PGE Park once held 36,000 or so for football).

Anyway, at the end of the game, there was no forced lineup of teams at the 50-yard line. No, the teams just sort of melded. Players who didn’t feel like shaking hands headed to the locker room. Others stood several minutes, arm in arm or in small clusters, talking about the game and sharing a moment of peace with an opponent. I liked it a lot.

When I was in high school, it was the same thing on the athletic field. After a game, if you were hurt (physically or mentally) you headed for the showers. But most often you met your opponent in the middle of the field for a handshake or a chat. You sought out the players you knew or that you wanted particularly to congratulate. It was informal — but very real and special.

Nowdays? Sorry, they’ve taken that specialness out of it and turned it into some version of what used to happen on the playground in fifth grade when little Johnny and little Billy got into a tussle. You know, Mrs. Good, the teacher on playground duty, would grab each one and make him apologize to the other, then shake hands.

“Tell Billy you’re sorry,” she’d say. “And Billy, you tell Johnny you’re sorry. Now shake hands.”

Yeah, that worked out really well.

Out there on the field before an emotional game is waaaay too late to teach anyone the value of sportsmanship. It’s not the proper time or place. It’s just a grandstand move, meant to somehow put a context to a game that has really nothing to do with the game itself.

But maybe it makes school presidents or wealthy alums somehow feel better about sanctioning the brutal spectacle that follows. The idea originated from the coaches and I can’t help but think they’re sucking up to someone with this plan — which deep down they have to know is a complete and utter waste of time.

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A while back I wrote about cause and effect and what it has to do with Oregon’s quarterback situation. But still, I’d always thought the Ducks did a decent job of getting their signal callers ready to play.

Until Saturday afternoon. Wow — did the coaching staff really think Oregon was so much better than Boise State that it could slide through the game by just lining up and shoving the ball down the Broncos’ throats? Forget about injuries to the quarterback, what in the world was Oregon’s game plan? If you really want to play smash-mouth football, get out of that spread offense, put a couple of tight ends on the field and hand it to a fullback 30 times. Otherwise, use the spread to get your receivers isolated in space and throw the ball up the field! Don’t bring a baseball bat to a tennis match.

That was an expensive mistake for the Ducks, who couldn’t afford a nonconference home loss. But neither starter Jeremiah Masoli nor backup Chris Harper seemed capable of making anything but the most elemental of throws and while they were in the game, the capable Oregon receiving corps was totally wasted. Sure the fourth-quarter comeback behind Darron Thomas (finally, a quarterback who can throw!) was nice but for most of the day, that was a very ugly Duck effort.

And speaking of ugly efforts, my goodness — wasn’t Portland State-Washington State one of the worst games ever played? I realize the Vikings need every penny but $225,000 wasn’t enough to justify that whipping against the worst team in one of the worst major conferences in the country. Honestly, I think there are Big Sky teams that could give the Cougars a go — but not PSU. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Mouse Davis quarterbacks look so inept.

By the way, this just in — the Pac-10 stinks. And after a full season of playing in the Pac-10, USC will be hard-pressed to keep its edge for the BCS playoff to come.

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