Doyel: NFL fans deserve better
CANTON, Ohio – The fans didn’t know. They bought giant cheese hats for $40, and they didn’t know. They bought T-shirts for $24.99, and they didn’t know. Hats for $20. Beer for $8. Polish sausage with kraut for $6.
Game programs for a game that already had been canceled? They bought those for $10.
Because they didn’t know.
What happened to the field at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium on Sunday was a shame. Paint applied by the grounds crew hours before the game turned into something like tar in some areas, concrete in others. The Indianapolis Colts and Green Bay Packers were in their locker rooms at about 6:40 p.m. when they were told their preseason opener had been canceled. It was a shame, but it was an accident.
What happened to the fans at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium over the next 80 minutes was no accident.
It was intentional. It was deceitful. It was the Pro Football Hall of Fame keeping alive the façade, using its scoreboard to show a countdown to an 8 p.m. kickoff that would never happen, because there was money to be made.
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“I’ve spent $50 since I got into the stadium,” Colts fan Ben Coleman of Terre Haute was telling me in the stands as the clock struck 30 minutes to kickoff. “You’re damn right I’m mad. I'm (expletive).”
Across the aisle, Packers fan Kwong Liu interrupts us.
“I spent $65 on this food,” Liu says, gesturing to hot dogs and pizza and drinks he bought for his party of four. “How (expletive) do you think I am?”
Technology being what it is, there were people in the crowd — plenty of people, trending younger — who knew the game had been canceled as the news leaked out on social media.
But society being what it is, there were people — plenty of people, trending older — who had no idea. With the scoreboard counting down to 8 p.m., now just 20 minutes away, I was asking fans what they thought of the game being canceled.
Memo to self: Don’t do that again. Because lots of these people didn’t know, and when they found out, holding bags of $25 hats and $15 coffee mugs, they were livid.
“I’m calling Fox News,” one of them told me with a splash of spittle.
The news wasn’t bad for everybody, of course. Vendors made a killing. Not that vendors knew the game had been canceled, because they didn’t. Not all of them.
“The game’s what?” beer vendor Herman Adams of Indianapolis said to me.
Adams, 59, sells beer at Lucas Oil Stadium and works at the Hostess plant on 29th and Shadeland — “I’m in the Ho Ho line,” he says — but he made the drive to Canton on Friday because “there’s money to be made here.”
Adams says he made $1,500 on Friday and Saturday, then gestures at his tub of beer on ice — and at the line of people waiting to spend $8 on a bottle — and says, “This right here pays for the hotel, food, travel. I’m doing just fine this weekend.”
Hey, that’s great. But now it’s 7:50 p.m., the scoreboard shows 9 minutes and 30 seconds to kickoff, and the crowd is getting antsy. Word is spreading: No game. The noise in the bleachers is not happy. It stays not happy for 9 minutes and 30 seconds until Hall of Fame President David Baker walks onto the field, stands between the Packers and Colts, and talks into a microphone.
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“Because of player safety …” Baker is saying, but the crowd isn’t listening. They’re booing. They’re furious, but fury burns itself out, and now it’s quiet enough to hear Baker again.
“ … and we’ll have the Colts cheerleaders on the field and …”
Booooooooooooooooo!
They’re angry and now they’re mocking Baker, who is listing all the wonderful events still planned at this football game — just, no football game — with derision.
“WHOAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
The NFL does what it does, and we’re mostly inured to it. The league makes season ticket holders purchase two bogus preseason games — take it or leave it — and we’re used to it. NFL teams get taxpayers to build stadiums for billionaire owners. NFL teams charge small fortunes for tickets and parking. The league blacks out games that don’t sell out in those taxpayer-funded stadiums. We’re used to it.
But what happened Sunday … NFL fans deserve better. Met three who were at the game, three generations of Indiana Wendowskis. Paul Wendowski is 73, Mike is 45 and Nate 13. They drove to Canton from Indianapolis early Sunday afternoon, after Nate’s Zionsville Youth Soccer Association team beat Indy Premier out of Fishers, 5-0. Nate was the keeper. Recorded himself a shutout.
This trip to Canton was Nate’s idea. For years he’s heard about the magical time his father had three decades ago, when Mike was about Nate’s age. Paul took Mike from their home in Columbus, Ind., to Canton. It was Nate who heard the Colts were playing the Packers this year in Canton. He told his dad. Mike looked at the calendar. What do you know …
“Tomorrow is Dad’s birthday,” Mike says, gesturing to the patriarch of this group, Paul. “With the Colts here in the game, it seemed meant to be.”
Now Mike is shrugging.
“Well,” he says, “it was a good idea.”
Paul can’t hear that kind of talk.
“You know what?” he says. “It was a great idea. And it still is.”
Grandpa Paul’s right, it was a great idea. The game was canceled on account of paint, but who can tell the future? Unpredictable things happen. It’s why they’re called accidents.
What happened after the game was called? That was no accident. It was NFL fans being tricked into staying more than an hour inside a football stadium where no football game was going to be played. It was concession stands doing big business. It was NFL fans learning, eventually, that they’d been had.
This being the NFL, it was not unpredictable. It was not (expletive) unpredictable at all.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel