Colt McCoy! Todd Collins! It's the NFL preseason, at Cleveland Browns Stadium!
Blog entry: September 1, 2010, 2:54 pm | Author: JOEL HAMMOND
After years of fan complaining about having to buy tickets to meaningless preseason as part of a season ticket package, the NFL appears — players' opinions be damned — on the verge of instituting an 18-game regular season, which would mercifully shorten the league's preseason. How bad is it? Check out the empty seats in this pregame video from Saturday's Detroit-Cleveland game.
StubHub has Browns tickets for Thursday night's game against Chicago for very little money. And it appears there are plenty of tickets available, so if I were you, I'd buy those $4 tickets, go to the game and sit wherever you want.
Colt McCoy, who threw a last-gasp pass out of bounds against Detroit on Saturday and has looked kinda terrible, will play the bulk of Thursday's game; for the Bears, it'll be a crappy combo of Todd Collins and Caleb Hanie. Brian Sipe and Jim McMahon, it's not.
Take a look at Week 1 of the preseason, where there were two sellouts (at New England, Philadelphia):
at Baltimore: 70,579 (71,008 capacity)
at Dallas: 72,282 (80,000)
at Washington: 69,578 (91,704)
at Atlanta: 65,276 (71,228)
at Miami: 59,108 (75,192)
at Pittsburgh: 55,248 (65,050)
at Arizona: 61,489 (63,400)
at Green Bay: 68,758 (72,928)
at St. Louis: 40,801 (66,965)
at San Diego: 55,837 (71,294)
at Seattle: 65,352 (67,000)
at Indianapolis: 65,664 (66,153)
at Cincinnati: 51,278 (65,790)
at New York Jets: 67,511 (82,566)
Overall, Week 1 preseason games filled 87.7% of capacity. Not bad, of course, but for a league that until a few years ago sold out every stadium every week and still suffers from just a couple bad markets, it's not great. Plus, look at the numbers: There are seven stadiums under capacity by at least 10,000, with Dallas about 8,000 under. Five or six are at least 15,000 under or darn close to it.
How about Week 3, after the novelty wears off?
at New England: 68,756 (sellout)
at Green Bay: 68,987 (72,928)
at Miami 59,144 (75,192)
at New York Jets: 50,508 (82,566)
at Kansas City: 64,809 (77,000)
at New Orleans: 70,031 (72,968)
at Detroit: 36,444 (64,500)
at Buffalo: 57,867 (73,967)
at Tampa Bay: 42,640 (65,857)
at Baltimore: 70,742 (71,008)
at Minnesota: 63,550 (64,121)
at Carolina: 71,110 (73,778)
at Houston: 70,725 (71,500)
at Chicago: 60,834 (61,500)
at Oakland: NA (63,026)
at Denver: 73,054 (76,125)
It drops to 86.7% here, but again, there are some bad ones: Six stadiums at least 10,000 under capacity, with five at least 15,000 under.
What do you think about NFL preseason games? Should the Browns and other teams stop their practice of forcing fans to buy tickets to these games as part of season ticket packages? E-mail me your thoughts.
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