The two cards that come to mind that shouldn't be too hard to get is
1. Discover.

2. BoA Travel Rewards.

Both should be much easier to get than any no fee card from Chase like United or Sapphire and those aren't easy to get without a credit history.
I very highly doubt that Chase would give your friend the CSP as his first card.

I have limited knowledge about cards from Capital One etc, so I can only talk about cards that I have owned.

If he's just looking for a card that has no FT fee then how about getting a secured card from BoA to build credit and the Charles Schwab debit card that not only has no FT fee, it also has zero ATM fees ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD and there's no limit.