A. The San Jose comes SS, not fixed.
B. If it was fixed, anything with a 17 out back has 17 patches, except of course 51x17 which is 3:1 so it only has 1. Granted a 47 is better if he wants to change his gearing and go fixed later, but it doesn't seem like it would be a factor here.

It's pretty hard to buy a bad chainring these days, just watch out for the old 110/130 chainrings that weren't actually made by Rocket, they are junk.