The plan is there, the enthusiasm by the staff is certainly there, however, in the end the New Orleans Saints decided they just can’t have fans in the seats for the start of the 2020 NFL Football season.
Blame it that damned COVID-19.
Speaking with Bobby Hebert and Zach Strief on WWL this afternoon, Saints President Dennis Lauscha explained why the Saints will play to an empty house:
“The reality of it is, it’s not just Orleans Parish [where the fans come from] but 30% of our fans come from across the region,” Lauscha says. “And across the region right now we have some of the highest per-capita infection rates in the country.”
Lauscha, like everybody, hope those rates can level off and even start coming down, allowing fans to gather, with proper social distancing, in the Superdome.
The Saints President says the staff worked very hard on a what they say is a league-leading, fully thought out proposal for football under the dome.
“As far as what the plan looks like, we were certainly looking at some kind of pod configuration—we had out analytics and business intelligence departments really map out the stadium in such a way so that we had the six foot distancing,” Lauscha describes. “Again, the plan was—and is—extraordinarily thorough. When the infection rates get back down, then we’ll roll out the plan and have fans come to our games.”
That should be a little more incentive to keep masking up and doing what we can to bring coronavirus rates down across the region.
