Seahawks offering season-ticket holders refunds or credits latest dire sign for football
If you find a positive sign about football happening this fall, please let the rest of us know.
The Seahawks sent their 61,000 season-ticket holders e-mails on Thursday. The message: an offer of refunds for the 2020 season. Fans have the option to credit their accounts for 2021.
If season-ticket holders do not respond to the Seahawks, they will automatically be credited for the 2021 season should the NFL cancel the 2020 schedule because of the coronavirus pandemic.
If there are games, the Seahawks have been planning for months for a half-empty, mostly empty or empty CenturyLink Field this fall.
It appears Seattle’s famous, roaring home-field advantage, perhaps the league’s best, will be muted in 2020.
“We would definitely miss our fans, no question,” Seahawks general manager John Schneider said this spring. “No question.”
This week the Baltimore Ravens told their season-ticket holders they expect fewer than 14,000 people at each home game there.
Also this week: the NFL players’ union informed members the league has proposed 35% of player salaries be held in escrow. That’s to help mitigate lost revenues because of the COVID-19 virus during the 2020 season. NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero first had that news.
You can imagine how that idea is going with players, already.
Forbes estimated in May the NFL will lose $5.5 billion of stadium revenue if the league and local public-health authorities prohibit fans in the stands at games this year. Forbes estimates the Seahawks are 16th in the NFL in in-stadium revenue, at $156 million, based on figures from 2018.
For many players, the 35% pay cut isn’t even the most absurd idea the NFL has come up with this week.
News broke Thursday that among the game-day protocols the league sent all teams in this pandemic year is this gem: players will be prohibited from exchanging jerseys. They will be prohibited from coming within six feet of each other on the field following games.
That is, after the league has players bang into, sweat and spit all over each other and violate all physical-distancing requirements for more than three hours each game. That’s so the NFL can collect its annual $5 billion from networks to broadcast the games on live television.
Former Seahawks All-Pro Richard Sherman, now with the 49ers, particularly loved that one.
“This is a perfect example of NFL thinking in a nutshell. Players can go engage in a full contact game and do it safely. However, it is deemed unsafe for them to exchange jerseys after said game,” Sherman posted on his Twitter page.
He added emojis of faces laughing hilariously.
Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson posted on Twitter: “thats DAMN SILLY bro,” with an emoji of a person slapping his forehead.
Thing is, the games may not happen—for some, or all, players.
The league and its union are discussing a potential plan for players to opt out of playing the 2020 season. Pelissero reported the intention is “to have an opt-out for players who have either a preexisting condition, family with preexisting conditions, (or) just (because of) general concerns over COVID-19 would not want to play this season,” Pelissero said.
“General managers were told on a call earlier this week there would be a specific date by which players would need to opt-out. That date is still to be determined.”
Players including three-time Pro Bowl defensive back and twice Super Bowl champion Malcolm Jenkins of the New Orleans Saints are speaking out about how uncomfortable they are with the risk of playing if positive cases for the COVID-19 virus continue.
“We end up being on kind of this trust system, the honor system, where we just have to hope that guys are social distancing and things like that,” Jenkins, a contributor for CNN, said on that cable news network late last month. “That puts all of us at risk—not only us as players and who is in the (team) building, but when you go home to your families.
“I have parents that I don’t want to get sick.”
Training camps are to begin July 28. The NFL is finalizing daily testing and protection protocols for players. There will also be protocols and testing for everyone who normally sees players on any day—including media members. They won’t be interviewing players face to face only virtually, via Zoom after practices.
The league and its players’ union are at odds over preseason games. The NFL wants to have—and halve—them, to two games. Many players want zero exhibitions. They wonder aloud why they’d be forced to play games that don’t count when minimizing risk is this unprecedented year’s buzzwords.
College football doesn’t offer much more hope. In fact, it’s offering less.
The Big Ten Conference announced Thursday it was canceling all non-conference games. It is only playing inside the league this year. So, no Michigan-Washington in September. No Ohio State-Oregon.
UW’s Pac-12 plus the Atlantic Coast Conference are expected to follow the Big Ten’s lead. The Ivy League announced this week it was canceling all fall sports.
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith this week shut down his school’s voluntary workouts for all sports after multiple student-athletes tested positive for COVID-19.
“Two months ago I was cautiously optimistic,” Smith told a Big Ten teleconference Thursday, “but I’ve lost that.
“I am concerned we may not be able to play.”
Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren went beyond football. He gave an ominous outlook for all college athletics and the sporting country.
He told his league’s television network: “We may not have sports in the fall.”
