Eagles Announce Only One Open Practice….$10 Ticket to Attend!
Wow, this is kind of shocking. The Eagles are only having ONE open practice this season and they are charging $10 to get in. Now the $10 does go to the Eagles Autism charity, but it’s still interesting that they are being this drastic.
Crossing Broad expressed it best how we basically all feel:
But the real gripe is less about the $10 ticket price and more about the almost decade-long debasement of a once-heralded part of the NFL season. Lehigh University training camp used to be a formative moment for Eagles fans, a pilgrimage of sorts that you embarked on with friends and family. You got to meet legendary players like Reggie White, Jeremiah Trotter, and Chris Boniol. Maybe you shook their hand or got a photo or autograph. Training camp created memories that lasted a lifetime, and now that’s been pretty much reduced to nothing.
Most teams still offer free sessions to their fans. In fact, 28 of the 30 NFL teams fall into that category.
Tim McManus, who broke the training camp news this morning, says the Seattle Seahawks are the other team that doesn’t have a free public session, after the jump:
The Seahawks charge a $10 transportation fee for practices at their VMAC training facility, requiring all fans to get to the field via provided shuttles from a nearby mall.
Based on polling of the 32 ESPN NFL Nation reporters, the Eagles and Seahawks are currently the only teams that do not offer a public practice that can be accessed without a fee. Seattle has one training camp practice this year at Pop Keeney stadium that comes with a $10 “event-related fee” as well. The other 11 open practices will be held at their training facility, one of the largest in the NFL, with registration on a first-come, first-serve basis.
The Seahawks’ facility is on Lake Washingon, so there literally is nowhere for fans to park. That’s unlike the Philly sports complex, which is a flat and boring concrete jungle with 10 bazillion parking spots.
