32 NFL teams are practicing at training camp on Wednesday, and 31 of them will have fans in attendance in some form or fashion. The New Orleans Saints are the only team that has totally closed its training camp to the public this summer. We’ve gotten a couple of different answers from team leadership on why that is, but their responses don’t add up to a cohesive statement.
Let’s start with Dennis Lauscha. The Saints team president was the first to answer the question when asked about it back in May, saying that as far as he was aware NFL marketing rules wouldn’t be a problem for having fans at training camp.
“I think that (rule) maybe pertains more to sponsorship,” Lauscha said during a recent press conference. “I can tell you we have a great relationship with the Rams and the Chargers, and that’s not an issue for us that I’m aware of. I think there is some plans (to have fans at training camp), I don’t know if it’s going to happen based on the layout (at UC Irvine) and what’s happening there.”
Fast-forward a few months and the Saints never got around to revealing those plans Lauscha hinted at. They did announce that they’ll hold two open practices at the Caesars Superdome and Yulman Stadium upon returning to New Orleans in August, but it’s not the same. When head coach Dennis Allen was asked about moving training camp to Los Angeles, he mainly focused on the weather and construction in Metairie rather than any fan considerations.
“Obviously, being away from home and away from our fans in New Orleans, obviously that’s the tough part about being out here in California for this training camp,” Allen answered. He acknowledged that moving camp to a new environment can help with a team-building culture, but ultimately the work in Metairie was what forced their hand. “But yet I don’t think you have to come out to California to change the culture.”
He continued: “Certainly the facility upgrades was going to be a challenge to hold a training camp with all the things that are going on. I mean we’ve got a fence in our indoor facility that makes it difficult to use the indoor. I looked at the forecast, I think it’s going to rain for the next month in New Orleans. So that would have made it even more challenging. All those things came together and led us to this.”
And then came Mickey Loomis, who most directly addressed the issue. He says the Saints decided early on that they wouldn’t be hosting fans at the UC Irvine practice fields:
“I think for us here, you know we’re away from our home market, we’re not expecting a lot of fans. We weren’t expecting a lot of fans. It’s just the venue, all the logistics that are involved. It’s significantly more logistics that are involved when you open it up to the public as to when you don’t. So all those factors came into play.
“I didn’t really do much inquiry about what we were allowed to do with fans or not allowed to do,” Loomis admitted during his opening press conference. “Because pretty quickly we determined that, hey, it’s going to be a limited amount of people at practice.”
That’s a wrongful assumption. It’s a couple of wrongful assumptions. Saints fans were so well-represented at joint practices with the Chargers in 2019 that they weren’t allowed to attend the next round of exercises in 2023. Sure, maybe only a couple hundred fans would be willing and able to make it to Saints training camp every day this summer — but Loomis couldn’t be bothered to make it happen.
The logistics he’s talking about, like paying for onsite security, medics, food and beverage vendors and other amenities, weren’t something Loomis was interested in. The Saints were valued at more than $4 billion last year and they’re currently paying north of $41.4 million in dead money for players not on their roster. But Loomis couldn’t find room in the budget for a couple of Los Angeles food trucks and some daytime security service, and maybe a standby ambulance if someone gets overheated?
The Las Vegas Raiders are under similar restrictions while holding camp in the area but at least they put the effort into compromising with the Rams and Chargers to bring in 140 to 200 fans (all season ticket holders who live in the Los Angeles area) per day. The Saints could have done something. Loomis acknowledged that he chose not to do anything for the team’s supporters in California or those who would have made the trip from further out.
And it’s not like UC Irvine can’t host a crowd. The Saints specifically chose this venue because the Rams have been using it for training camp for many years. The Rams estimated that almost 100,000 spectators visited their 10 open practices in the summer of 2022.
Even if the NFL’s marketing rules were a problem — which Lauscha says he didn’t know about, and which Loomis says he didn’t care about — and even if UC Irvine’s campus would have restricted attendance (which didn’t stop nearly 10,000 Rams fans from showing up every day), this all could have been avoided by not going there in the first place.
The Saints could have gone anywhere in America for training camp. And when they were deciding on that, their fans were not a priority. Mild weather in Southern California was the concern, not whether the people who invest in their team can make the trip. If Loomis, Lauscha, or Allen would just say that, at least you could respect the honesty. Instead it’s being spun as something that was mostly out of their hands, or far enough out of their hands to where they didn’t feel compelled to fight for it.
A lot of questions have been raised about the Saints’ quality of leadership inn their three-year playoff drought. Unforced errors like this one, alienating the team from its fanbase, suggest those leadership questions extend to the front office.
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