NFL Senior VP/Government Affairs Jeff Miller is “on a plane headed to the San Francisco Bay Area as part of the league's review of fan violence” stemming from last Saturday's Raiders-49ers game, according to Chris Mortensen of ESPN.com. Miller, who “launched the NFL's Fan Code of Conduct in 2008, will meet with San Francisco chief of police Gregg Suhr to discuss coordination of league game-day security.” The plan “does not include adding more police, rather dispatching an organized patrol of pregame parking lots, clearing those lots of anybody who is not inside the stadium by kickoff and then inside the stadium.” Miller will attend the Texans-49ers game Saturday and the Saints-Raiders game on Sunday. The NFL “receives detailed security reports after each week's slate of games and provide a full audit and review.” That includes “handing out grades to all 32 NFL teams at the end of the season even while reviewing procedures in-season.” League sources said that the 49ers have “not graded well” while the Raiders have “made significant security improvements since 2008” (ESPN.com, 8/25).
SCORE FOR TV: In Jacksonville, Gary Smits wrote the violence at the Raiders-49ers game last week “underscores, in a brutal way, a belief that I’ve had that the NFL has gone overboard in emphasizing the at-home experience vs. attending a game.” Smits: “Why won’t teams imploring the public to buy tickets address these issues adequately? They haven’t. If they think they have, they’re wrong. I would invite any NFL owner to get out of their luxury box and sit in an end-zone section of a stadium during one of their games and witness this behavior for themselves” (JACKSONVILLE.com, 8/25). In L.A., T.J. Simers writes fans will “see attendance drop everywhere in sports as stadiums become too costly and dangerous for families.” TV money, which is “guaranteed money, is so important to teams.” Simers: “Why would you ever consider going to a sporting event again? And why would you if the event was being shown on TV?” (L.A. TIMES, 8/26).
