Visiting Fans and Football: "We Want You At The Game."
Disparate approaches to visiting fans reveals how debate not about public health, but personal ethos of those in charge
(Photo Credit: NPR Illinois)
It’s been a year since everyone’s lives were turned upside down by this virus that came from China, or SARS-CoV-2, or the novel coronavirus that causes coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19.
Or for those of us who call it the ‘corona’ or ‘the virus,’ that’s fine, too.
However it’s referred to, or still is (we can drop ‘global pandemic’ as a label at this point think), we are far enough along, with enough data, to evaluate responses at the state level.
For the most part, those responses can be categorized in two silos:
Open (less restrictions on gatherings, businesses, living life as normal, etc.)
Closed (more restrictions on gatherings, businesses and living live as normal, etc.)
Earlier in the week, the United States Bureau of Labor released new statistics that highlights unemployment figures by state in January 2020 and January 2021.
Here is the list:
For a graphic of the states in map form, here is another look:
A review of the top 10 states, or those that saw the lowest jump in unemployment rate, highlights a commonality—an ‘open’ approach during Covid (the exception being Vermont).
A look at states at the bottom of the graphic, or those that saw at least a four percent leap in the unemployment rate, finds another commonality—a ‘closed’ or ‘lockdown’ approach during Covid (no surprise that Illinois, California and New York are members of the ‘four percent’ club).
Assuming there is collective agreement that unemployment is bad for the economy, a an analysis of the numbers from the US Department of Labor numbers can lead to one rudimentary conclusion.
Closed: harmful to states
Open: helpful to states
We are far beyond investigating answers to the question ‘do lockdowns work?’ They don’t. What they do is serve as political capital for greedy governors and other dangerously ambitious state and local politicians. The trickle down effect of that approach in states like Illinois, is how the ‘closed’ approach was adopted by teacher’s unions, administrators and school boards.
On an even more meta level, a ‘closed’ approach is emboldening athletic administrators in keeping mons and dad and grandmas and grandpas from watching their sons and daughters participate in sports and activities around the games.
It’s happening with the opening weekend of football season. Something as basic to human existence as a mom or dad driving to a high school to watch a child play football or cheer or march in the band is no longer ‘allowable.’
That’s because there remains those with decision making power who stay closed.
Fortunately, there are others with an open ideology.
In February, I did an informal survey of suburban administrators asking about their spectator approach to basketball season.
With football kicking off Friday night, I did the same for that sport.
Here is the email copy I sent to all athletic directors in the North Suburban Conference, Mid-Suburban League, Central Suburban League and four schools in the East Suburban Catholic/Chicago Catholic League (Notre Dame, St. Viator, Loyola, Carmel).
Hi Andy,
How are you? Jon Kerr here with The Kerr Report newsletter.
I know football season starts Friday and soccer has already begun.
Three questions about spectators:
*Is your school allowing the 20% maximum spectator capacity?
*How are you distributing tickets?
*Are you allowing visiting fans to attend games?
Thank you.
Out of the 36 schools I sent questions to, I heard back from about half that number.
(To review—on March 8, the Illinois Department of Public Health announced spectator limits for outdoor sports. That limit is 20% of venue capacity for outdoor sports. That’s where the ‘20% maximum spectator capacity’ reference in the email comes from).
A week ago, I published an article sourcing suburban administrators about their initial interpretation of the ‘20 percent venue capacity’ limit. Then, from the sources I spoke with, it appeared the NSC, MSL and CSL were all headed towards a ‘no visiting fans’ policy.
That is no longer the case. At least for two conferences.
The MSL and CSL will allow spectators from visiting teams to attend games live.
Here are email responses from athletic directors in the MSL and CSL:
Vernon Hills (CSL):
*Is your school allowing the 20% maximum spectator capacity? - outdoors yes.
*How are you distributing tickets? - approved fans will be on pass lists
*Are you allowing visiting fans to attend games? - outdoors yes.
From D211, that makes up the majority of MSL schools:
The District 211 will allow the 20% spectator capacity in the stadiums. For football, we will allow away spectators based upon our visitor bleacher capacity. The away school will be given an allotment of tickets to give to their school. The home bleachers will be controlled by each home school. Athlete’s parents will be given first priority and then each school will decide how the excess tickets will be distributed.
Because we typically do not near a 20% capacity during a soccer game. We have not put any restrictions, home or away, for soccer games.
From Deerfield (CSL):
Yes, we are allowing up to 20% capacity for all outdoor events.
We are distributing the tickets internally for football and also allotting the appropriate number based on the 20% capacity for the visitors sideline.
How schools operationally are handling tickets and seating is customized based on the specific school.
But across the board, they are in agreement on an ethic—visiting fans are welcome.
I needed a little more context, so I called Barrington Athletic Director Mike Obsuszt and Glenbrook North AD John Catalano.
Barrington is it’s own district (D220), but is in lockstep with its conference colleagues in D211.
Obsuszt said:
As a parent of a former football player, you want to be able to see your kid in person in any sport. But football has that injury nature to it, it’s a collision sport and there is a comfort level in knowing you are there.
We talked about it. What can everybody’s visiting bleacher gate hold and an equitable number and still socially distant to have parents the opportunity to go. We will give an allotment where every visiting player can have two spectators come and watch.
Barrington has an extra week to work all this out as the Broncos don’t play their first home game until March 26. But for parents and/or family members of Palatine football players, Barrington’s March 26 opponent, there is likely peace of mind knowing that if they so choose, they can be in the stadium to watch their son compete and daughter perform.
Catalano’s school, Glenbrook North, is hosting a week one game Friday night. He and his staff are more under the gun, with only 11 days from the public health guidelines being released until the school’s first game.
But the basketball season provided a good beta test for football.
Catalano said:
We had some guiding principles with basketball. In our conference, some schools did more than others. I leaned on a little bit more. I had cheerleaders and poms at halftime, our pep band is a pretty big deal here and we worked out a system where we were pumping in live music while games and time outs were going on. We were able to pull out a few different things.
Catalano added how in initial conversations with other CSL AD’s right after the spectator limits were released, the collective sentiment was to allow visiting fans.
“We want you at the game. We want you to watch your son or daughter,” Catalano said.
While I was talking to Catalano, he was stuffing envelopes. Inside the envelopes were vouchers to be handed out to all fans coming to the game.
Glenbrook North has one of smallest home grandstands of any team in the CSL—1,750 is a close estimate, according to Catalano. The visiting grandstands seat approximately 750 people. So Catalano and his staff are printing off enough vouchers to equal twenty percent (the max allowed under public health recommendations) of home and visiting bleacher capacity—350 for consumption by home fans and 150 for road fans.
“The voucher entitles you to come to the game. When you arrive, you hand off the voucher and pay $5 then get your ticket,” Catalano said. “If you don’t have a voucher, you can’t get in.”
No voucher, no entrance. Seems like fair rule, grounded in public health adherence and resourcefulness.
Too bad not all conferences are adopting that sensibility.
For parents or fans in the CCL/ESCC, there’s no room for interpretation on what the conference thinks of them:
Attempts to get context on the rule went largely unanswered.
St. Viator Athletic Director Jason Kuffel sent an email confirming the conference’s ‘no visiting fans’ rule. Notre Dame’s Mike Hennessey got back to me and said “ease into situation” in response to a question about the ‘no visiting fans’ rule.
Talk to the hand, I guess.
I did hear back from the majority of athletic director’s in the North Suburban Conference. Here were a few email replies:
From Lake Zurich:
We are following the 20% capacity limit.
We will be allotting a specified number of tickets per rostered athlete in football, cheer, dance and the band so their parents can attend. Any additional tickets not used will go to our student body starting with our seniors.
At this time, we are not allowing any visiting spectators.
Mundelein:
Yes we are allowing 20 percent
Tickets for football games will go to an allotment per athlete and what we have left over we are going to allow some students to attend our home games. As an administration we talked today and it will start with our seniors.
No visiting fans at this time, we want our parents and students to be able to have some semblance of a school year and what it should offer.
Stevenson:
Is your district allowing the 20% maximum spectator capacity? yes
*How are you distributing tickets? using a ticket app
*Are you allowing visiting fans to attend games? still under consideration
I had a conversation with one NSC AD, Lake Forest’s Tim Burkhalter (the Scouts are hosting a game Friday night and not admitting visiting fans).
Here are excerpts from the conversation:
We want to allocate as much as we can to our families and students. My guiding light is the six feet social distancing between households. It’s not an exact science. You have to measure your seats and we have been out there measuring the bleachers. We’ve got cheerleaders and dancers and band members. As much as we want to make this an unlimited thing and let them come we have to set boundaries. We want to be equitable to our people and do it in a thoughtful way.
I tell people a couple of months ago we weren’t playing contact sports at all. We went from having games to now getting some of our home fans in there. There’s so much on our shoulders to provide a safe environment for our students and parents. We want to support our community and our families and our kids as best we can and we’re not so stubborn to not adjust as things change.
As I wrote last week, the target who deserves the most disdain for the spectator situation is Gov. Pritzker and his public health servants. It is asinine that a high school athletic staff is charged with following the same public heath mitigations as the Cubs or White Sox (the Cubs announced Tuesday that Wrigley Field is hosting live concerts starting in July. That’s great. Hope to rock out to Guns N’ Roses this summer while clutching a $15 beer. But how stupidly arbitrary is it to say that by July things will be at full capacity but now, 20 percent is ‘safe’). High schools, public and private, are filled with dedicated staff members committed to their job, school and kids. But it’s a skeleton group compared to the resources of professional teams worth billions of dollars.
School administrators should not be in the position to have to deny fans access to a high school football game. But the CCL/ESCC press release, that shows a red hand symbolizing ‘no access’ as if parents are immigrants crossing a border they shouldn’t be crossing, is embarrassing and horrendous optics.
Back to my opening argument of this article about ‘closed’ vs ‘open’.
All cities of all schools in this state are in Phase 4. Everyone is operating under the same public health recommendations, equal mitigations.
This far into ‘corona,’ when people in charge use ‘health and safety’ as a shield for not denying personal freedoms, we call bullshit. There’s been a lot of that the last 12 months and now we have the data to support how the motivations for lockdowns was often not about public health but individual profit.
So as we deal with admittedly draconian spectator limits for outdoor sporting events, when I hear ‘take care of our own’ as a lead strategy from administrators, meaning appease home fans over visitors, I hear another shield disguised as a public health service.
A shield that protects personal comfort over civic responsibility. How remaining ‘closed’ is better than executing industrious ideas on how to ‘open.’
It’s not the message Americans need to hear right now.
Friday night should be a celebration at high school stadiums all over Illinois. It will be, just not as joyously as it should be.
As long as stay closed remains an ethos in public policy, we will never be fully open as a state or country.
“I call bullshit”....thank you for your honesty, integrity and fighting for our kids.