Bengal Fans, Here's How to End Blackouts

At the very least, is it possible that the NFL changes so that you don’t have to completely sell out, maybe sell 60% of tickets, or a certain number of seats.

They just need to end the blackout rule as it stands now and replace it with one that looks like this:

If you are an owner of a team, you retain the “rights” to air the broadcast in your local market. As soon as you accept public money to build a stadium, make improvements, or maintain the building, the “right” is lost and the broadcast can happen.

The way I look at it is simple. The owner is making a huge investment in a community when he buys and locates a team in an area. If he spent his own money, he should be able to do whatever he needs to get people in the door. On the flip side, once you start asking the taxpayers to pay for it, you lose your leverage. Maybe a rule like this could sway some of the owners to start paying their own way again. I doubt it, but hey, they would have the option.

will make sure and do my part this weekend. Living up here in Cleveland, the one good thing is that am outside the blackout area with the Sunday Ticket. But will go on and join the cause, would be awesome to force a change.

I’ve been fucking with cancer for the last 4 + years. Surgeries and chemo have left my stomach as a ball of pain. An occasional jostle at a supermarket isn’t too bad, but the kind of crowds that attend football games is beyond anything I have the physical capacity to tolerate. Not imparting any intent, but the bumps and elbows from those kinds of close crowds all people already riled up and a couple more beers than you see at a Reds game and people already wearing big coats due to weather, etc, and it’s rough. Never mind the thought of encountering someone who is just being a tool.

I don’t seem to encounter the same kind of issues at a Reds game. I’ve been to some since all of this started. I went to one Bengal game since and I won’t be back. It drops me to my knees or I have to take opiates for it.

If I was on chemo at the time, I’d be even less able to go due to the capacity for crowds to carry flu and seasonal viruses that are much more serious to someone with a diminished immune system, as I am during those time. [I spent eleven days in the hospital in January 2009 struggling for my life (dangerous neutropenia) from an intestinal virus that I, in normal times, would have just spent a couple days on the toilet and laughed off about loud farts or whatever.

ending blackouts would be nice for folks in my situation

When is everything going to be presented to the FCC? And will they see individual comments or will they just see that XX amount of people commented/signed the petition thing.

Tell the FCC to please go die in a car fire. Slowly.

Then, on a completely unrelated note, please take into consideration how unconstitutional it is to tell a corporate entity that they must give their product away for free. Like it or not, that’s just not the way this country works. How could it?