On the same day that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said the Cowboys will play for her fans as the NFL season kicks off, it has to redden and twist its incredibly stretched skin to break knowing another team in Dallas was the first to play for fans yesterday.
FC Dallas, one of the two rejections of the MLS Is Back Tournament, hosted Nashville SC, her colleague who rejected the applicant in the first sporting event by one of the (non-NASCAR) leagues on American soil no allowed paying customers since the pandemic hit. While Texas Governor Greg Abbot – who I assume is just the character of Mel Brooks out Blazing Saddles came to life on the basis of … well, everything – had decided that sports venues could operate at 50 percent capacity (probably maintained by Jones himself to prevent that said skin fracture to reveal the bugs he was made of), said Dallas FC so funny that they would only allow 25 percent at Toyota Stadium in Frisco.
Only about 2,500 people actually walked through the doors, and in a vision of what we will all do nicely each time we leave the house in the near future, they all had to sign an exemption that they would not keep the stadium, Dallas FC , as MLS responsible if they would catch COVID-19 and, you know, get sick and die. Welcome to America, where nothing is your fault but nothing is the other man’s fault either.
While Dallas FC took steps to reduce risks as much as possible to allow fans – somewhere on the level of pissing on things in a burning house to keep them wet – such as sitting rope, keeping people six feet apart and paying cash for everything , this is another state where the positivity level of testing is 24.5 percent. There is no way to categorize an attempt to gather any group of people as anything other than reckless, moral, dangerous, and selfish. But that’s what’s going on the license plates in Texas, isn ‘t it? I’m sitting here on a gold mine if that is not the case.
Not only was the game the first to take place for fans, but it was also the first time we saw massive Black Lives Matter protests for fans. This was something of a test drive for if the rubber meets the road, that would have to happen somewhere below the line. It went about as you might expect in Texas.
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One of apparently throwing a bottle on the field when all players and refs took a knee for the national anthem while some other fans bowed. Maybe the temptation is to dismiss it as just one of or just a handful of dipshits, but that’s all it will take when stadiums are full again, assuming protests are still taking place, to prevent something cruel.
That does not mean that the protests should stop as it seems, or that they are completely empty, just because they have so far taken place in empty stadiums and arenas. Protests have even more meaning than directly in the face of those who need to see / hear them. They also can not be cowed by dangerous air, as we have seen all summer. But since Colin Kaepernick took a knee-jerk five years ago, emotions and stakes are clearly much higher now. The fuckstick that throws a bottle on the field will not be the last to pull out at those who take a knee, and it will be up to teams, stadiums, and leagues to continue supporting players, coaches, refs, and fans who are still protesting, regardless of what incidents happen. It’s easier to do if they only appear in front of a television audience. It will not be the same when there are incidents like this in Dallas as much worse. And no one would bet that there are no chances of a worse incident.
To repeat, there is one person who ignored a pandemic in a state that did not show much interest in doing much other than putting people on a conveyor belt to get sick to look after a live sporting event that he should never have allowed, that he could physically respond to a protest over Black people being shot by police without fail. Again, the urge is to remove this as one joker. And yet deep down, we know that this is far too large a part of what this country is right now.
If only loss of Dallas FC had been some consolation.
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