Very busy week here at FoS HQ, so let’s dispense with any introductory chitchat and get right to the news we didn’t already get to this week:
- California is set to allow fans back into outdoor sporting venues in counties with low coronavirus infection rates, but no county in Southern California qualifies and Santa Clara County has ruled that it won’t allow fans at San Francisco 49ers games yet, and the baseball season is almost over, so this will only apply to a few high-school and college teams, maybe? Meanwhile, Louisiana is allowing attendance at high school football games at 50% capacity for parishes where virus positivity rates are below 5%, because those are nice round numbers, I guess? I sure hope the virus counts in base 10.
- The sales-tax increase that delivered $309.5 million in tax money to the Green Bay Packers over 15 years worked out great, says the CEO of the Packers. In related news, Jesse James says the light security on America’s trains has provided a terrific economic boon to society.
- The head of the Saskatchewan Party, which is the ruling party of the province of (wait for it) Saskatchewan, says he’d consider kicking in some provincial money toward a new sports arena in Saskatoon. Saskatoon, you will recall, has no major sports teams but needs a new arena because of some kind of extended used-car metaphor, so it’s nice to see the province stepping up to meet urgent community needs.
- Here’s an entire article about how sad it is to see the Superdome empty when you’ve had so much fun going to games there, which is maybe just slightly tone-deaf, The Atlantic, in a week when the New Orleans Saints have been revealed to be lobbying hard to allow fans into the dome, indoor virus precautions be damned.
- Let’s talk to the architect of the Texas Rangers‘ new stadium about how great it is to play the World Series in, even though he didn’t get allowed in to see the games in person either!
- This isn’t new, but it’s new to me: The 1989 opening ceremonies for SkyDome were completely amazing, and if you think I mean that in a good way, you have never watched Alan Thicke doing a musical dance number with Andrea Martin about retractable roofs.
That’s all for now, see you all Monday!