Rich Tandler's Real Redskins

NFLPA head Smith wants all fields certified for safety

The home of the Redskins is not the only grass NFL field drawing scrutiny. NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith wants to put all of them under a microscope.

After complaints about the condition of the playing surface at FedEx Field and continuous issues with grass surfaces at placed like Soldier Field in Chicago and Candlestick Park in San Francisco, Smith wants every field certified to make sure that it is up to standards.

Smith said that it is a matter of workplace safety. "In the same way that somebody who works at a department store or somebody who works at a coal mine considers that mine or that floor or that factory their workplace, the field on game day is the workplace where our players work,” Smith said on ESPN 980. “If they are in a scenario where that workplace is not as safe as it could be, I can promise you that this union and this leader of players is gonna weigh in and we will take whatever steps we think are appropriate in order to ensure that the National Football League is expending the resources to keep the workplace as safe as possible."

Should the Redskins, Bears and other teams have issues with getting their fields up to safety standards they would have a few different options. One would be to switch to Field Turf or another brand of artificial surface. Fourteen of the NFL’s 32 teams play on an artificial surface, including most of the outdoor stadiums located north of FedEx Field.

There is another possible solution if a team wants to upgrade its field while maintaining the tradition of playing on grass. Fields in Denver, Philadelphia, and Green Bay are composed of a combination of natural grass and artificial fibers called Desso GrassMaster. There have been many January postseason games played on those fields with virtually no complaints about the quality of the playing surface.

Neither option is cheap but finding a permanent alternative would be preferable to continually needing to lay down new sod and take other temporary measures to keep a grass surface playable through December and January. 

FedEx Field will soon be one of the 10 oldest NFL stadiums

While perusing an NFL.com article on stadium construction I ran across a table that listed NFL stadiums by their age and I was mildly surprised to see that that FedEx Field, which opened in 1997, is moving into the group of the older stadiums in the NFL.

As of right now 13 stadiums, ranging from Lambeau Field in Green Bay (opened in 1957) to Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte (1996) are older than FedEx Field. But that will change in a few years when the 49ers move out of Candlestick Park (1960) to their new digs in Santa Clara and the Vikings abandon the Metrodome (1982) for their new downtown stadium.

And sometime in the next several years a team, perhaps the Chargers (Qualcomm Stadium 1967) or Bills (Ralph Wilson Stadium 1973), is likely to bolt for a sparkling new stadium in Los Angeles. There is a lot of buzz that Atlanta will replace the Georgia Dome (1992) well before the decade is out.

If those moves are indeed made the place the Redskins have called home for just 15 seasons will fall into the group of the 10 oldest stadiums in the NFL.

That brings up the question of if a new stadium is in the Redskins’ future. The answer is yes, but it is likely that a new home is more in the distant future than something that is right around the corner.

Some have talked of a big stadium with a retractable roof, a facility that could attract big events like a college basketball Final Four, college conference championship games, and big-time concerts in addition to providing a home for the Redskins for 10 games per year. There has been talk that the team should move back to D. C. but there is no serious proposal for doing so on the table.

But a new home for the Redskins may be a pipe dream. It will be a challenge to get any sort of modern stadium built at all. The price tags for the two newest NFL stadiums, MetLife in New Jersey and Jerry Jones’ palace in Dallas, were $1.6 billion and $1.15 billion, respectively. Cowboys Stadium has a roof while the stadium in the Meadowlands does not.

In comparison, FedEx Field cost about $250 million to build. By the early 2000’s, the cost of building an NFL stadium had gone up into the $300 million range. A decade later, there was the massive jump to the price tags we saw for the stadiums in Texas and New Jersey. The Santa Clara stadium is slated to run $1.2 billion and the Vikings building will cost something in that neighborhood.

Given that rate of inflation in construction is not hard to see the cost of a new stadium approaching $2 billion towards the end of the decade, which is the earliest the Redskins could realistically expect to put a shovel into the ground for a new building. Coming up with that kind of money would be extremely challenging.

The days of taxpayer-funded NFL stadiums are long gone. Team ownership is expected to provide at least half of the cost of a new stadium. With the Redskins among the most profitable teams in all of sports the expected owner’s contribution could go higher. It would be extremely difficult for Dan Snyder to economically justify stroking a check for a billion dollars or more for new digs, even if he could. It would take a very long time to make enough additional profit to cover that mount.

Even if Snyder could kick in his share it’s hard to see any of the government entities making such a financial commitment. Virginia governor Bob McDonnell’s staff was grilled for the state giving the Redskins a grant of $4 million towards the renovation of Redskins Park. Unless the political distaste for being accused of “subsidizing billionaires” changes anytime soon it is hard to see anything approaching what the government’s tab would be for a new Redskins stadium getting approval.

FedEx Field has undergone various additions, improvements, and renovations since it opened. The latest, the installation of standing area where some of the less-desirable end zone seats used to be, is just being finished for the upcoming season. It is likely that the stadium will undergo several more rounds of repairs and upgrades before a new building is seriously considered.

Chances are that FedEx Field will be much older than the 10^th oldest stadium before it is replaced. If the current atmosphere persists, FedEx will be approaching its 30^th birthday before a new stadium is in the offing. 

Stand behind (and in front of) your Redskins

We know that many fans want to stand up and cheer for their Washington Redskins. But how many are willing to stand up for the whole game and pay for the privilege of doing so?

The team has sent an email to fans offering standing room seats in the upper deck of FedEx Field for $290 for the eight regular season games and two preseason games. 

The standing room area was created when about 10,000 upper deck seats were removed in order to build what the team called “party decks”. It appears that the name has been dropped but the areas will be ready for the coming season.

On their general seating tickets, the Redskins do not list the 10 percent county tax that is paid at purchase. That could well be the case here so expect to pay the additional money if you are interested in the standing room tickets.

As of now, the standing room tickets are available for full-season purchase only. Single game sales could happen at some future point if  all of the tickets available, estimated by the Washington Post to be 4,000 to 5,000, are not sold as season packages.

Since the area is designated as standing room, the tickets do not need to be sold out in order to lift the NFL’s blackout restrictions. 

The lowest priced general admission tickets have a face value of $44, although those prices are grandfathered in for fans who were displaced when the upper-level end zone seats were removed. The cheapest ticket available to new ticket holders is $64. 

Eagles have had their way at FedEx Field

By Ryan O'Halloran
CSNwashington.com 

What should gain some traction as the week goes along is how Philadelphia has turned FedEx Field into Lincoln Financial Field South. The Eagles fans – and they have a base in the D.C. area – have gobbled up tickets for years at the cavernous (but now smaller) stadium.

And Philadelphia usually has the better team 

The Eagles have won eight of their last 10 games in Washington.

The only two losses were 2008 (Week 16, Redskins 10-3, when Jim Zorn’s job was probably hanging by a thread) and 2005 (Week 9, Redskins 17-10, when Terrell Owens was suspended a day before the game).

The Redskins are the only NFC East team without a home loss. They went 2-6 at home last year, 3-5 in 2009, 4-4 in 2008 and 5-3 in 2007.

 

The cost of being a Redskins fan: It's all relative

By Rich Tandler

One of the perpetual complaints about Redskins games at FedEx Field is that they cost too much. The price of everything from the tickets to the parking to the beer and hot dogs come under fire throughout the NFL season (although the objections are diminished somewhat when the team is doing well as is the case this year).

No doubt about it, it is costly to go to a Redskins game, but the NFL is an expensive proposition these days. The cost of attending a game at FedEx Field is slightly higher than the national average but relatively low when consider that the Washington area is among the most affluent in the country.

According to research by Mint.com, a personal finance website, the average cost of attending an NFL game for a family of four is $427.42. This included an average price of $77.36 per ticket, $25.92 for parking, $4.03 for a game program, $7.13 per beer, $4.40 per soft drink, $4.78 per hot dog, and $16.55 per adjustable hat.

It costs $441.43 for a family of four to attend a Redskins game, about 3.3 percent more than the average. The cost of going to a game at FedEx Field is within range of the cost in cities like Indianapolis ($452.34), San Francisco ($440.56), and San Diego ($435.20).

There are two cities where the cost of taking that family to the game exceeds $600, or $150 per person. Seeing the Jets at Met Life Stadium sets you back $629.90 (47.4 percent more than the average) and taking the family to Jerry World in Dallas costs $613.80.

The numbers provided by Mint.com do not include the cost of personal seat licenses (PSLs) that some stadiums charge for the right to buy season tickets. It would be tricky to try to calculate them into the equation, since they are not a factor in single-game ticket sales and since PSLs can be resold they are not a sunk cost when you buy the season tickets. Still, a PSL can add $5,000 to $35,000 per seat to the total cost of being a fan. The Redskins do not have PSLs. There is some sort of PSL requirement in Dallas, the Meadowlands (Jets and Giants), Cleveland, Charlotte, Nashville, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Seattle, Houston, St. Louis and Pittsburgh. 

The cost of seeing the Redskins is a relative bargain when you consider that the Washington area has the second-highest income level in the country behind the San Francisco area. According to the Census Bureau, the median household income in the Washington-Baltimore area is $57,291. If the mythical family of four at that income level gets Redskins season tickets and attends all 10 games (eight regular season plus two preseason), they will spend $4,414 or 7.7 percent of their income. In only seven other NFL cities does attending a season of NFL games set a family back a lower percentage of its income.

The smallest bites out of family income come in Oakland (5.9 percent), San Francisco (7.0) and Minneapolis-St. Paul (7.3). There are nine NFL cities where a season of attendance costs more than 10 percent of the median family income — Tampa, Miami, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, New York (Giants and Jets), New Orleans and Dallas, which has the dubious honor of topping this ranking at 12.9 percent of household income. (Wait, I thought the most expensive was supposed to be the best.)

This knowledge may provide solace when you are writing out a check equal to a few months’ mortgage payments for your season tickets or getting no change back from your $20 bill when you buy a couple of beers.

Well, maybe not. But it could be worse. You could be in Dallas.

COST OF BEING A FAN

Average cost of attending 10-game NFL season as part of the home city’s median household income. Teams with PSL programs are marked with *; PSL costs are not included in the cost figures.

 

Source: Mint.com and U. S. Census Bureau

 

Redskins to fans: Arrive early

The Redskins have some advice for fans attending Sunday’s game against the New York Giants—arrive early.

That usually is a good idea for fans who want to be able to make it inside FedEx Field in time for kickoff without rushing to their seats. But it will be very smart to get there early on Sunday, the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Security was going to be heightened in any event but the recent terror threat that has been in the news this week will cause things to be buttoned up even tighter. There always is a security check on the way into the stadium, which includes a pat down, and expect it to be a little more thorough than usual on Sunday.

The parking lots will open at 12:15, and the gates will open at 2:15 for the 4:15 kickoff. The team is recommending that fans get to their seats by 3:15 in order to see the pregame ceremonies in memory of the 9/11 attacks. About 150 family members affected by the attack on the Pentagon will be honored on the field. 

 

Ben's Chili Bowl to open at FedEx

By Jennifer X. Williams
CSNwashington.com 

The Redskins announced Tuesday, that starting with the season-opening game, the iconic D.C. establishment will be serving its infamous Chili Half Smokes and Chili Dogs on both the Club Level and the Upper Level. Chili Cheese Fries will be offered on the Upper Level. Ben’s Chili Cheese Nachos will be served on the Club Level. 

Having moved to the area less than a year ago, I was quickly ushered to U-Street to experience Ben's Chili Bowl, dubbed 'the' must try if one is looking to discover great places to eat in the district. 

According to the Redskins press release since Ben and Virginia Ali opened the doors in 1958 Ben’s has hosted numerous high profile customers including Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Usher, Mary J. Blige, Bono, and of course Barack Obama.

Kamal Ali, CEO of Ben’s, spoke on the merger with the Redskins, saying “This is a passion for us. Our family has always been actively involved in the Washington, DC community, so being there with the Skins just feels natural because they are our home team and their history in DC is even longer than ours! Our family loves the idea of supporting them at their home base, and we sincerely thank the Redskins for inviting us.”

Washingtonians are passionate about their Skins and Ben's Chili Bowl, so they have one reason to cheer regardless of the score of the game.  Speaking of which, fans will already be drowning their sorrows with $9 beer, so let's hope the chili isn't too pricey!