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What makes a great NFL stadium? Is it the gameday atmosphere? The architecture? The sight lines? The concession stands? Ticket prices? History? Several of those things can also factor into what makes a bad venue.

There are a variety of ways you can break them all down. Last season, there were 31 stadiums for the league’s 32 teams. There are now 30, with the Giants and Jets sharing MetLife Stadium in New Jersey as the Rams and Chargers share SoFi Stadium in southern California.

Since The Athletic has quite a few NFL reporters, we decided to use our experiences to put together a ranking of the league’s best and worst stadiums. In the process, we also figured out which ones rank somewhere in the middle.

To reach our final totals, we had 31 NFL writers rank the NFL’s five best and five worst stadiums in order. Since games have not been played in SoFi Stadium or Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, those were omitted from this exercise. However, the L.A. Memorial Coliseum (Rams), Dignity Health Sports Park (Chargers) and Oakland Coliseum (Raiders) were all part of the survey since teams played in those stadiums last season. (Note: Every reporter in this survey has not been to every stadium.)

Let’s begin with the worst.

5. Paul Brown Stadium (Cincinnati Bengals)

Paul Brown Stadium, which opened in 2000, received 12 votes among the worst-five stadium rankings. Just missing out on the bottom five were MetLife Stadium (Giants and Jets) and Hard Rock Stadium (Dolphins). Each received 10 votes. Others that received at least three votes in the worst-stadium category: Raymond James Stadium (Buccaneers) 6, New Era Field (Bills) 5, Mercedes-Benz Superdome (Saints) 5, FirstEnergy Stadium (Browns) 4, Levi’s Stadium (49ers) 4, Soldier Field (Bears) 3, Dignity Health Sports Park (Chargers) 3, Ford Field (Lions) 3 and Bank of America Stadium (Panthers) 3.

Bengals reporter Jay Morrison: “Paul Brown Stadium is only 20 years old, but it already feels like a relic with its drab gray exterior and interior. Shawshank had more character. There’s no Ring of Honor or Hall of Fame or anything else that signifies where you are, and it’s nearly impossible to roam from one side of the stadium to the other without changing levels multiple times rather than just walking around the concourse the way you do in most venues. The good news is there are a couple of escalators to get you to the upper canopy level. The bad news is they only work about 35 percent of the time, much like the team’s game plans.”

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3 hours ago, I_C_Deadpeople said:

 

 

Let’s begin with the worst.

5. Paul Brown Stadium (Cincinnati Bengals)

 

Bengals reporter Jay Morrison: “Paul Brown Stadium is only 20 years old, but it already feels like a relic with its drab gray exterior and interior. Shawshank had more character. There’s no Ring of Honor or Hall of Fame or anything else that signifies where you are, and it’s nearly impossible to roam from one side of the stadium to the other without changing levels multiple times rather than just walking around the concourse the way you do in most venues. The good news is there are a couple of escalators to get you to the upper canopy level. The bad news is they only work about 35 percent of the time, much like the team’s game plans.”

This is a very fair assessment.  All you need to do is walk 500 yards over to Great American Ballpark to see how it is done. The fact that PBS doesn't do anything to honor any of its former players or the team's history to include the 2 Super Bowl teams continues to be a head shaker.   The only good think about it is the club level bars.  Yeah, its better than the ashtray called Riverfront but Springboro's High School stadium was better than Riverdump.

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On 7/8/2020 at 12:30 PM, SF2 said:

This is a very fair assessment.  All you need to do is walk 500 yards over to Great American Ballpark to see how it is done. 

 

Understatement, the stadium experience between PBS & GABP is night & day.   PBS has all the atmosphere of a parking garage.

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19 hours ago, I_C_Deadpeople said:

I have never been to either but by the sounds of it, PBS is a perfect match for Mike Brown’s personality

 

GABP is really nice, from the first base line you've got a good view of the river & it has a fun atmosphere just walking around the concourses with a beer or whatever.  

 

 

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On 7/11/2020 at 2:30 PM, T-Dub said:

 

GABP is really nice, from the first base line you've got a good view of the river & it has a fun atmosphere just walking around the concourses with a beer or whatever.  

 

 

Plenty of things for kids to do too.  Very family oriented.  Plus it literally empties out into the bars and restaurants which is cool. 

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I think we are witnessing the death of American sports.  

 

In the new normal we'll probably get one sport kinda like the USSR and hockey.  But ours will probably be something like a transgender basketball league.  That would be very fitting with the current direction of our universities and institutions. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

With No Guidance on Handling an Outbreak, MLB Must Scramble

MLB's extremely detailed Operations Manual didn't clearly spell out how to handle a COVID-19 outbreak.
 

MLB’s 2020 operations manual has details on how players should board an airplane, how much time a baseball must sit untouched before it can be considered disinfected, and how many physical therapists can enter the restricted area of a ballpark. It addresses rosters, travel, and visas; spitting, high-fiving, and showering; cryotherapy, saunas, and wet rags.

It does not address what happens if a club has so many players test positive for the coronavirus that it can no longer field a reasonably competitive team.

 

And yet, only four days into the season, this is exactly the question that the league faces: What do you do when one team experiences an outbreak? Is there a point where you must shut down, if only temporarily?

 

If there is such a point—is this not it, with positive tests for 11 players and 2 coaches on the Miami Marlins and the entire team stranded on the road in Philadelphia, where they received their last test results?

 

These questions jumped out from the time that the return to play was announced. How do you handle this logistically, competitively, ethically? But there’s only one section of the manual that discusses the possibility of a situation with multiple cases of the virus on one team, and that has to do with roster movement, not any of the more pressing questions here: “In the event that a Club experiences a significant number of COVID-19 Related IL placements at the Alternate Training Site at any one time (i.e., three or more players), and the Club chooses to substitute those players from within the Club's organization, MLB reserves the right to allow that Club to remove those substitute players from the Club Player Pool without requiring a release.”

 

“Three or more players” is what the operations manual deemed “significant,” at least when it came to the Alternate Training Site. But the Marlins now have more than triple that from their active traveling roster, in a nightmare situation for the league, and there’s no official instruction on how to move forward. The manual does not address how to proceed in the face of a suspected outbreak. Which is how you get reports that the team’s decision to play yesterday—with what was, at the time, three confirmed infections—was made in a group chat governed by veteran shortstop Miguel Rojas, rather than by, say, a previously agreed upon set of league officials and public health experts.

 

MLB’s plan was never to build an environment where the virus could potentially be shut out—while the idea of a bubble was floated back in May, it never had much traction, even as most other leagues decided to use such a format. (Which made sense: MLB has much larger rosters than the NBA and needed months of a regular season versus an expanded playoff like the NHL or a month-long tournament like MLS and the NWSL.) Instead, MLB decided to hold the season in its regular stadiums around the country, acknowledging that the virus could and likely would still enter their playing environment, and designed a protocol that was meant to identify cases quickly and isolate them before there could be too much spread.

 

This means that baseball was prepared for positive tests, with an operations manual that tells a team how to address such a result for one player, or coach, or staff member. But there’s no written instruction on how to handle a situation like the Marlins’—one that looks like an outbreak.

 

“If you’re trying to play in two dozen home markets here in the U.S., just based on the level of viral spread that we have, I’m very concerned that some of those will have rampant spread and be exploding at any given time,” Dr. Zachary Binney, an epidemiologist at Emory University, told SI for a story that addressed some of these same questions back in June, when they were still just hypothetical. “And if that’s the case, could your local public health officials shut it down and say you can’t play? Or will you say, it’s too dangerous, we can’t play? Will you get so many cases on your team that you’ll be forced to shut it down? And if that happens, what does that look like in terms of scheduling disruption?”

 

More than a month later, as the outlook on the virus has worsened in several baseball markets, MLB has still not found solid answers for those questions. But it’s had to scramble on all of them. If local public health officials shut a team down? The Blue Jays faced that before the season even started; MLB’s solution was to try to move the club to Pittsburgh, then Baltimore, but had to end up sticking them in Triple-A Buffalo. (The manual definitely didn’t prepare for that one.) If there’s a critical mass of cases on one team? Now we’ll find out. The Marlins have not yet flown back to Miami; the team’s home opener tonight has been postponed. The Yankees-Phillies game has been postponed, too, in order to ensure that the visitors’ clubhouse that the Marlins just vacated in Philly does not potentially introduce any more spread. That’s today. What about tomorrow?

 

A 60-game season in 66 days does not offer much room for disruption. A double-header or two can be added if you’re talking about a small number of contests. Beyond that, it’s tough. And the logistics are just one piece of the puzzle. If the Marlins are without 11 players for a full week—let alone two weeks, or longer—how are they supposed to proceed competitively? When Commissioner Rob Manfred was asked about what it would take to shut down the season on The Dan Patrick Show, this was the standard he set: “The way that I think about it, Dan, is in the vein of competitive integrity of a 60-game season. If we have a team or two that’s really decimated with a number of people who had the virus and can’t play for any significant period of time, it could have a real impact on the competition and we’d have to think very, very hard about what we’re doing.”

 

Is this—11 players—not that exact prompt to think very hard about what they’re doing? If this has happened to one team, so early in the season, how does the league try to ensure that it doesn’t happen to others? The manual does offer some flexibility here: It acknowledges that MLB can relocate a team to a neutral site at any point and, with the input of the players’ union, institute additional restrictions to govern behavior away from the field. But how can anyone have faith in what comes next when this is the result of the original protocol?

 

And, of course, it’s not just about scheduling logistics and competitive integrity. There are players and coaches with serious concerns about health risks. But they’re not the only ones here. What about the hotel staff? The outlying members of the support staff, who may not interact directly with the players, but can interact with those who have interacted with them? What about the families? The decision on how to move forward here may be made primarily on the basis of the competitive principle referenced by Manfred. But there’s far more at stake here beyond the legitimacy of the season.

 

In Marlins CEO Derek Jeter’s statement on the situation, there was some curious diction in the first sentence: “unchartered waters,” he wrote, rather than “uncharted.” An innocuous typo, probably. But given how little guidance there is in the official governing document of this season—how little instruction there is on how to handle such a foreseeable dilemma—you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. 

 

https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/07/27/marlins-covid-outbreak-operations-manual

 

 

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Marlins COVID-19 outbreak: Four additional players test positive; 17 total reported cases among team

The Marlins will not be opening the home portion of their schedule as planned

Major League Baseball's 2020 season is not even a week old and one team has already experienced a coronavirus outbreak that will sideline a chunk of its roster and has caused multiple games to be postponed.

 

The Miami Marlins are now up to at least 17 reported positive cases of COVID-19 between players and coaches of the traveling team since Opening Day, including four more players testing positive on Tuesday, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic.  

 

Miami's traveling party remains quarantined in Philadelphia, but the new positive tests suggest their series later this week in Baltimore could also be in danger of not being played as scheduled. (Commissioner Rob Manfred suggested the two teams could resume play as soon as Wednesday, provided there were "acceptable" testing results.)

 

The Marlins haven't been the only team impacted by the outbreak. The Orioles returned to Baltimore on Monday night, and the Philadelphia Phillies, who hosted the Marlins over the weekend at Citizens Bank Park, also had their Monday and Tuesday night games vs. the Yankees postponed

 

The "vast majority" of Nationals players have voted against traveling to Miami for this weekend's three-game series, reports The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal. Ultimately, the final decision rests with MLB. The Nationals are currently without superstar outfielder Juan Sotowho tested positive on Opening Day and is still going through protocol. Manager Dave Martinez, who has a heart condition, told reporters on Monday, "I'm scared. I really am."  

 

MLB issued the following statement on Monday:

Tonight's scheduled games between the Miami Marlins and the Baltimore Orioles at Marlins Park and the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees at Citizens Bank Park have been postponed while Major League Baseball conducts additional COVID-19 testing. The members of the Marlins' traveling party are self-quarantining in place while awaiting the outcomes of those results. Major League Baseball has been coordinating with the Major League Baseball Players Association; the Marlins; the Orioles; the Marlins' weekend opponent, the Phillies; and Club medical staffs, and will continue to provide updates as appropriate.

Marlins CEO Derek Jeter released a statement saying postponing Monday night's game was "the correct decision."

"The health of our players and staff has been and will continue to be our primary focus as we navigate through these unchartered waters. After a successful Spring 2.0, we have now experienced challenges once we went on the road and left Miami. Postponing tonight's home opener was the correct decision to ensure we take a collective pause and try to properly grasp the totality of this situation. We have conducted another round of testing for our players and staff, and our team will all remain in Philadelphia pending the results of those tests, which we expect later today. We will provide additional information as soon as it becomes available."  

Here are four additional things to know about this story.

Who has been affected?

Four individuals consented to allow the Marlins to disclose their positive test ahead of Monday and Tuesday's news: Catcher Jorge Alfaro, outfielders Garrett Cooper and Harold Ramirez, and pitcher Jose Urena, who was scratched prior to his Sunday start. None of the others have had their identities revealed. Remember, they have to give the Marlins permission.

Where are the Marlins, Orioles?

The Marlins have not left Philadelphia. They were scheduled to depart on Sunday evening, after the game, but changed their plans to leave on Monday. That flight did not take off, however.

The Orioles, meanwhile, are back in Baltimore. Outfielder Dwight Smith Jr. tweeted that the plane was departing for Miami on Sunday night. That tracks with the normal operating procedures that see teams arrive the night prior rather than the morning of games. They then returned back home on Monday evening.

Are the Phillies at risk of a similar outbreak?

Because the Marlins almost certainly had individuals who tested positive playing in games over the weekend, it's fair to wonder if the Phillies might be at risk of a similar outbreak. 

 

Based on what is known about COVID-19, the highest risk for infection is spending prolonged time in closed or poorly ventilated areas with large crowds and in an intimate fashion. In other words, playing a baseball game outside with (mostly) fleeting contact does not seem like a situation that should engender transmission from one individual to another -- at least not on another team.

 

The Athletic talked to a pair of infectious-disease experts who agreed that the likelihood of transmission from the Marlins to the Phillies was "low." Of course, "low" doesn't mean zero, and Phillies players (and Yankees players, if they are asked to dress in the same clubhouse as the Marlins did) are right to be nervous about the situation at hand.

 

So far, there's been no indication that any Phillies player contracted COVID-19 from the Marlins series.

 

Will the season be canceled?

For the time being, no. Owners and commissioner Rob Manfred held a conference call Monday afternoon and reportedly decided not to pause or cancel the 2020 season at present. Still, there is plenty of uncertainty moving forward. Ostensibly, if the season remains in place, then more players could opt-out rather than expose themselves and their loved ones to the potential for a similar outbreak in their clubhouse.

 

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/marlins-covid-19-outbreak-four-additional-players-test-positive-17-total-reported-cases-among-team/

 

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Marlins players reportedly went out in Atlanta before COVID-19 outbreak

With so many things to do in a city like Atlanta, it might not be the ideal place for an out-of-towner in the middle of a pandemic, or more specifically an athlete. Not resisting the urge to hit the city for a night out could result in, at minimum, a bunch of headlines. Just ask Lou Williams of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers.

 

At worst, the decision could apparently wreck an entire professional sports schedule. According to USA TODAY columnist and RADIO.com sports insider Bob Nightengale, that's exactly what happened with the Miami Marlins.

 

During an appearance on 93.7 The Fan's (Pittsburgh) "The PM Team w/Poni & Mueller," Nightengale said the Marlins' outbreak stemmed from a night out by a few of the players.

 

"I think a couple of guys went out in Atlanta," Nightengale said. "So, that's what happened. I don't think it was any kind of fluke from the bus driver, pilot or something like that. I believe some guys got careless... at least one guy did, for sure. He went out, and I think he came back positive, spread it around."

 

However the outbreak started, the breakout resulted in 17 Marlins testing positive for COVID-19, the postponement of the team's schedule this week, which included games against the Orioles and Nationals, and the postponement of the Phillies' series against the Yankees.

 

"I think this is a wake-up call for all other teams that you better not go out at night," Nightengale said. "If you bring it in, you got a chance to knock off the season by yourself."

 

https://sports.yahoo.com/marlins-players-reportedly-went-atlanta-041836355.html

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
2 hours ago, Le Tigre said:

How will the Bengals know who to draft?  :ninja:

 

 

 

I know, cheap shot...but certainly “earned” in years past.  However, I am now hopeful that the franchise has turned the corner on ineptitude.  

 

🦗

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5 minutes ago, I_C_Deadpeople said:

If there is no college season this year this brings a whole new meaning to the term “crapshoot “ when it comes to the draft

Speaking of which, i heard that if there is no college football nfl is gonna be taking over Saturday for games, that would be weird 

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13 hours ago, Griever said:

Speaking of which, i heard that if there is no college football nfl is gonna be taking over Saturday for games, that would be weird 

Doubt it.  Too much of a scheduling and logistic nightmare.

They have enough on their plates just figuring out if, how, and who as far as getting fans into the stadium much less players on the field.

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