I don’t think the Eagles get it.

Team President Don Smolenski went on the 94 WIP Morning Show today and delivered what I felt was a fair, yet somewhat tone deaf message to Birds fans regarding the decision to cut down down training camp access to one open practice at Lincoln Financial Field. That session will take place on Sunday, August 4th, with a $10 fee going to the Eagles Autism Challenge.

That’s great, awesome – no issues at all with the charity angle here, which I think is congruent with what everybody else has said and written about the topic. The issue that I and others have is that training camp used to be a rite of passage for fans and an opportunity to meet players and access the team in a very open and engaging way. Now that concept has been debased to the point where it’s almost not even a thing at all.

The Eagles do not seem to understand that, that the essence of public training camp was to create a lasting bond between fan and team. It was about young children being able to get Nick Foles’ autograph, or maybe take home Reggie White’s sweaty wristband or discarded ankle wrappings. It was about creating impressionable moments that turned young kids into lifelong Eagles fans.

Angelo Cataldi asked Smolenski to explain why the team cut open sessions down to one, and the answer is lengthy, so I’ll break it up into a few parts, after the jump:

I think, when we moved training camp from Lehigh to the NovaCare Complex, there are a lot of things you’re trying to balance. You’re trying to do what’s best for the football team first, that’s probably 1a, and obviously the fans are like 1b or 1a-1, however you wanna do it. But we also have to manage the neighbors, because in reality, we are actually, per our lease, not allowed to have training camp at NovaCare. We’re able to have training camp at NovaCare because of the great relationship we have with our really great neighbors, who we’ve worked with ever since we opened NovaCare and opened Lincoln Financial Field, that they knew what was good for the team and they were very supportive. So we had to have some compromises, and that compromise is that we can bring only so many people in to NovaCare to watch.

I get it, though I’d love to know what “so many people” amounts to in terms of a hard number. Logistically, there’s more than enough room on the perimeter of the NovaCare outdoor fields to accommodate fans on bleachers, but I just don’t know if it’s feasible to do that. However, when you take into account players, media, employees, sponsors, and all of the various folks already down there on any given day, that number is pretty significant in terms of total people at the practice fields.

Also, when Smolenski says “neighbors,” he literally is talking about residents who live in the area. There are houses across Hartranft street about 100 feet from the complex, so I’d imagine there’s something written into the Eagles’ lease regarding noise and crowds, but I obviously wouldn’t have access to that information.

More Smolenski:

That led us to have the public practices at Lincoln Financial Field. When we first did that, not really having any experience and having Lehigh as a reference point, we started with five (sessions). Over five, the attendance levels dropped, we went down to three, now we’ve been at two, and this year we are going to one. But what we found is last year that 120,000 tickets were reserved for the two practices. Of those 120,000, only 10,000 were actually reserved for both days, and only 2,500 people actually came to both days. 3,500 people came to none and 5,000 came to one. So what that was showing to us was, we can do this in one practice and we can schedule the time.

This is missing the point.

You’re not trying to attract the same supporter to multiple days of training camp. You are trying to cast the largest net possible, a net that allows a greater portion of the fan base to attend at least one day of camp. Of course there’s going to be some overlap, as there was in Lehigh and at West Chester, but going by Smolenski’s numbers, there were still more than 100,000 people who attended just one of the two practices. That’s what you want. You are literally looking for people who can only make it down to one session, perhaps that lower income family that can’t afford to take their family to a regular season game. You want to open yourself to all demographics of the fan base.

The thing he doesn’t mention, and I wouldn’t expect him to, but certainly this is about the money. It ain’t cheap to open the Linc and staff the stadium (then factor in all of the various operating expenses that go along with doing a public camp session).

I’d think you could find some extra money in the budget to do a nice thing for fans, but what do I know?

More Smolenski:

We’re also juggling, tonight we have the Rolling Stones concert, so the field is going to be torn up, the field is going to be re-sodded and that kind of ruled out this first weekend, but we also found that if we have a practice before our first preseason game, that attendance also drops. Trying to balance all of those factors led us to that Sunday night, one practice. We can accommodate 70,000 and we’re already over 23,000 with still two-weeks to go, which is great. This is an adjustment and I think people are reacting to this adjustment totally understandably but I think it’s going to be a great experience with a pretty good vibrant energy at Lincoln Financial Field.

I mean, if you have to re-sod after a concert, then it is what it is. For what it’s worth, the Gold Cup quarterfinals were just played at the Linc and the field looked great to me, but if a Stones gig kills the grass, then okay. Still, it’s not like training camp is some high-impact, full-contact event, so I can’t imagine how much field chewing is taking place, but I’m not on the Birds’ groundskeeping crew, so I don’t know what to say.

For what it’s worth, this is what the Linc schedule looks like leading up to the Birds’ home opener:

  • July 23rd: Rolling Stones gig
  • August 4th: open practice
  • August 8th: Eagles vs Titans (preseason game)
  • August 22nd: Eagles vs Ravens (preseason game)
  • August 31st: Temple vs Bucknell

That leads into the Redskins game on Sunday, September 8th. There’s also a rumored USWNT game that would take place on August 29th.

Look, regardless of what Smolenski is saying, the point is this:

The Eagles are one of just two teams in the NFL that does not have a free public training session for fans. And while Smolenski explains why they can’t do this and they can’t do that, what I don’t hear from him is any kind of solution to the problem. He doesn’t offer an alternative. There’s nothing along the lines of, “you know what, I understand why training camp is important to fans, and we apologize for the evolving changes to the preseason schedule.”

And I think we all understand why Lehigh just isn’t an option anymore. We’re talking professional players preparing for an NFL season. They don’t need to be posting up in college dorm rooms an hour away from home, where the professional facilities are professional fields are located. From a logic standpoint, it always made sense to leave Lehigh and go to NovaCare full time for preseason.

Regardless, you’re still killing off some of the spirit of late July and early August, that aforementioned essence of training camp, and that’s the part that sucks for the fan.

Here’s the full audio, the training camp question is around three minutes in and carries to about the 7:30 mark.