Camp Control leaves fans locked out
PHILADELPHIA >> Long, long, long before Sam Hinkie took the phrase mainstream, the Eagles had begun to trust a process they were convinced someday would work. The effort was to gradually but decidedly put as much as possible under their control. The training camp they will run beginning this week will be high among their crowning achievements.
That’s because it will be no fun for the fans to watch.
Though the process has evolved over decades, not days, it happened: Training camp, like so much else of what they do, will be so under the Eagles’ control that just one practice will be open to the public. And even that one, next Sunday night at the Linc, will cost the fans a 10spot.
If there were a true football reason, a matter of vital strategic benefit, a competitive edge to be gained by preventing the most loyal fans in American sports from enjoying a few hours of glorified touch football, then the Eagles would be onto something. But then, every other NFL organization would
be doing it, too. Yet it is not an industry-wide practice. The Denver Broncos will have 19 open trainingcamp practices. And the New England Patriots not only open camp but welcome their fans to hang around for an hour afterward.
Oh, starting Friday, there will be fans at most of the Eagles’ NewsControl Compound practices. Some will carry signs. Some will purchase souvenirs. All will take selfies. But they will be sponsors and friends of sponsors or other such Beautiful People. As for the guy who used to drive to Lehigh hoping they would get a rookie to say hello, he can try to peek through the fence and hope he isn’t threatened with an arrest.
Not that it is new that the Eagles will open their practices so infrequently. They have been holding only two open practices a summer since 2015. Yet that was their plan: Do it gradually. So this year, two has become one, a 50-percent drop. What’s next?
There was some pushback on the one-open-practice directive. But not much. By now, Eagles fans have been conditioned to be told where they can tailgate, how much personal dignity they must surrender to modestly qualified security personnel on the way into the stadium, and when their coach or quarterback might agree to share their football thoughts. But Tuesday, when team president Don Smolenski explained the decision on WIP, the official Eagles radio station, the rationalizations came across as insulting.
Last year, Smolenski said, only 2,500 fans made it to both open practices. The implication: Most fans have the energy to watch only one practice anyway. Odd, but when it served their propaganda machine as they were failing to turn Philadelphia into a one-professional-team town, the Eagles regularly boasted of how many people were rolling into Bethlehem daily.
Smolenski stressed that there were issues with the neighbors concerning multiple training camp practices. There must be some kind of an event there four times a week. To blame people who live in a stadium district for randomly dreading an additional couple of open football practices is too convenient to believe.
Smolenski worried about the field condition. What? Are the fans grinding monster trucks across the 50-yard line? If the Eagles practiced before no fans, or if 77,000 were in the seats, the field would wind up in precisely the same condition. And even if the surface would need care on days after a concert or some other event, don’t the Eagles have a grounds crew on retainer?
Going for the touchdown, Smolenski insisted the Eagles believe that closed practices are better for their team. They did win a world championship during this no-camp-fans era. He probably should have pounded that point. Yet only the head coach can make that declaration, and the Eagles were shooing fans away from camp long before Doug Pederson’s arrival.
Vic Fangio, of the Broncos, is a head coach. And here’s why his practices are open: “One of the small things that have driven the NFL to being the most popular sport in the country is that you let people come watch practice. People that maybe can’t afford to go to the game. Maybe get an autograph from a player. Maybe a player shakes their hand or throws them a sweatband or a glove. You do that with a young person, you’ve got a fan for life and football has a fan for life. There is more to be gained out of that than any advertising slogan or any commercial that you put on TV. I think it is a good thing, and I think I’ll embrace it and the players will embrace it.”
As for the Eagles, they won’t. No, they are too addicted to control. And they don’t care to have annoying football fans around wasting their time. So they will open the Linc once and will redirect the $10 admission fee to their Eagles Autism Challenge charity. They are charitable. They are. They build playgrounds and sponsor an eye mobile and have a proven streak of kindness. But if using training camp for fund-raising is so important, why not have 19 open practices and raise 19 times the money?
The reason: They would not be able to keep their fans at a tolerable distance. So soon, there will be none left who remember the camps Fangio describes. Few will have fisthand memories of the day 25,000 swarmed Bethlehem to see Terrell Owens. Fewer will recall the many warm summer evenings when young fans would stroll with some of the greatest players in Eagles history back to their West Chester University dorms.
At that point, the process will be complete.
Just as a control-obsessed operation had trusted all along.