GREEN BAY – The Lambeau Field concourse is usually so loud on game day that you can't hear yourself think. On Sunday, it was so quiet you could have heard someone else think. If someone else had been there.
For the first time in history at Lambeau Field, and the second time this season, the Green Bay Packers played in a (mostly) empty stadium. Oh, there were photographers and a few sports reporters and lots of security people in the stands, but they hardly counted.
What wasn't there Sunday couldn't be missed. Outside the bowl, it was like a black hole for noise. You could hear cars on Lombardi Avenue and South Oneida Street, but had they been closed like they are on normal game days, the dearth of sound would have gone from uncomfortable to unnatural. It certainly was that in the concourses, where neither cars nor sounds from the bowl penetrated.
Many of the trappings of game day remained.
Televisions near closed concession stands in the concourse played to missing eyeballs. After Mason Crosby kicked his first field goal, a video of his five children sending greetings to dad played on the scoreboards.
Inside the bowl, music blared loudly during warmups in an attempt to replace the energy that would be there if the coronavirus pandemic hadn't made this the strangest of all NFL seasons.
When the game began, the music was replaced with remarkably lifelike crowd noise, except it didn't respond to plays with cheers, groans and booing. On the other hand, you could hear something normally drowned out by your average 78,000 voices all talking at once — cheering from the team benches. When the Lions stuffed the Packers for a loss on a running play, the cheering from the Detroit sideline had an almost high school exuberance. It was matched by the Packers on the next play, when they got a first down.
On the other hand, there were no lines for the restrooms, no spilled beer or nachos on the floor to step in, and no bodies to climb over getting to a seat. That's positive, right?
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Everyone entering the stadium was required to answer COVID-19 questions and have their temperature checked. Inside the stadium, NFL protocols for pandemic football were in full force. Even access to totally empty parts of the stadium was restricted, which apparently had much to do with sanitizer stations. Being in the bowl during the game was verboten, except for the above-mentioned reporters, photographers and security people.
The concourse at Lambeau Field is void of people during the Green Bay Packers home opener against the Detroit Lions on Sept. 20, 2020, in Green Bay, Wis. No fans were allowed inside the stadium due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The areas around Lambeau were various kinds of busy.
One of the Packers party houses had a large gathering, and a couple of others had smaller groupings of hardcore grillers. Green Bay Distillery put a really big TV and socially distanced tables in its parking lot, while Stadium View Bar, Grill and Banquet had all the appearances of a normal game day. The place was packed.
Six-hundred yards down Valley View Road to the west of Lambeau Field, Lisa Conard and family watched the game in her sister's front yard.
Normally, Conard would be at the game — 205 consecutive home games was her streak — but on Sunday she had to settle for walking up to Lambeau and touching one of the entrance gates, then trekking back to her sister's to await the fireworks that indicated, two plays ahead of television, that the Packers had scored. There were a lot of fireworks on Sunday, when the Packers cruised to a 42-21 victory.
Before the game, the Lambeau Field parking lot was not entirely empty. Dog walking seemed to be a preferred pre-game ritual on a day when no ritual would get you inside the stadium.
Ben Lawrence and Jenna Benson pose for a photo with their dogs outside Lambeau Field before the Green Bay Packers home opener against the Detroit Lions on Sunday. Fans were not allowed to attend the game due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Ben Lawrence and Jenna Benson were there with their dogs. Lawrence is from Eau Claire, although he's a student at Concordia University in Mequon. So, closer for a quick jaunt to Lambeau Field.
Security guards checked on people who got close to the stadium but otherwise the parking lots were open to pedestrians, some of whom took advantage of no lines to take pictures at the Lambeau Leap statue.
Lot 1, the heart of hardcore tailgating was empty. Just. Empty.
A couple cars pulled up outside Johnsonville Tailgate Village to pick up pre-ordered Gameday To-Go packages of Lambeau Field food for game-watching parties. That was the extent of tailgating at Lambeau Sunday.
About an hour and a half before game time, Packers President and CEO Mark Murphy walked across Lot 1 and down Mike McCarthy Way headed on some unnamed errand, with no entourage in sight. It's the kind of thing you wouldn't expect at any other NFL stadium, but in Green Bay, it's not that surprising.
At the Lombardi Avenue entrance, a man stood with a sign suggesting that players stand for the national anthem (all the Packers and most of the Lions stayed in the locker rooms for the anthem), and across from the main Oneida Street entrance another man had a sign that said "Proud Veteran, Not a sucker," in response to comments allegedly made by President Donald Trump disparaging war veterans.
That, at least, was not entirely unusual for a game day, but with no Packers band, no "The Bears Still Suck" blaring from speakers and no bean-bag toss between rows of tailgaters, it was the strangest of days at Lambeau Field.
Contact Richard Ryman at (920) 431-8342 or rryman@gannett.Com. Follow him on Twitter at @RichRymanPG, on Instagram at @rrymanPG or on Facebook at www.Facebook.Com/RichardRymanPG/
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This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Packers win, but an empty Lambeau Field is just weird on game day
Full Chelsea Squad Revealed For Leicester City Clash With Timo Werner Back In Training
Chelsea will have the chance to move six points clear at the top of the Premier League table when they travel to Leicester City for Saturday’s early kick-off game.
The Blues head to the King Power Stadium three points ahead of closest rivals Manchester City and West Ham United, knowing that victory against the Foxes, coupled with other results going in their favour, will put clear daylight between them and the chasing pack.
West Ham play Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday afternoon, while Man City host Brighton and Hove Albion on Sunday.
While Chelsea will go into the Leicester clash as clear favourites, having gone the last five games unbeaten, a run that includes four wins, Thomas Tuchel still has some very notable injury worries to deal with.
Read More Related Articles Read More Related ArticlesRomelu Lukaku is very close to returning from a sprain that he picked up in the Champions League game against Malmo in October, but the Leicester trip has come too soon for him, and the same applies to Mateo Kovacic, who is still recovering from a hamstring injury.
Speaking in his pre-match press conference on Friday, Tuchel said: “I can tell you that Mateo and Romelu are still out for tomorrow. Romelu is close to team training so hopefully will join the squad on Sunday, he is pushing hard to come back ASAP.
Chelsea striker Romelu Lukaku is not fit enough to face Leicester on Saturday (Image: Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC)“Mateo, it will take another days until he is ready and will miss more matches.”
Timo Werner also came off injured in that Malmo game with a strain, but the German forward was pictured back in training this week and is in contention to feature on Saturday alongside fellow forward Christian Pulisic, who has fully recovered from the ankle injury that has kept him out of action for Tuchel's side for the last two months.
Thiago Silva should also be available in spite of the long distance he travelled while on international duty with Brazil, as is Mason Mount, who has been absent from recent games through illness and the removal of his wisdom tooth.
“Timo in team training since yesterday, we will see as we have another training in two hours. Maybe he can make the squad or the bench,” added Tuchel.
“Pulisic feels fine. Thiago will be training, he did not play [for Brazil] but he has some travel in his body and time difference. I am confident. Mason is back in training.”
With the latest injury news addressed, we take a look at the full squad Tuchel has to choose from today:
Goalkeepers : Kepa Arrizabalaga, Marcus Bettinelli, Edouard Mendy.
Defenders : Antonio Rudiger, Marcos Alonso, Andreas Christensen, Thiago Silva, Trevoh Chalobah, Ben Chilwell, Reece James, Cesar Azpilicueta, Malang Sarr.
Midfielders : Jorginho, N'Golo Kante, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Saul Niguez, Ross Barkley, Mason Mount.
Forwards : Christian Pulisic, Timo Werner, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Hakim Ziyech, Kai Havertz.
Larry Magid: Computing Has Gone Full Circle, And It’s Time To Go Back A Bit
My very first computer was a Cyber 70. I didn’t own it nor did I ever get within a few feet of it. It was a giant mainframe housed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Graduate Research Center. I accessed it via a terminal located elsewhere on campus or in my apartment. What I was doing was called time sharing because — as one of many
Larry Magid Gary Reyes/Staff archivespeople accessing that mainframe — I was sharing its processing power with other users. The mainframe kept track of how much processing time I was using and — after I finished my doctoral dissertation — I got a bill for several thousand dollars for my share of that computing time, although I didn’t have to pay it because it was waived for graduate students.
As mainframe users go, I was late to the game. By the time I was in graduate school, it was at least possible for students to remotely access the campus computer. In the ’60s, you pretty much had to be or be working for a data scientist to access a research computer or be a bureaucrat in a large institution to access a mainframe that was being used to process bills, register university students, or help carry out the war in Vietnam. I came of age at a time when computers were seen mostly as a tool of the “man.” During a time when many of my generation were demanding “power to the people,” computers were used on us (some would say against us) but not by us. Indeed, one of the slogans from Berkeley student activists of the ’60s was “do not fold, spindle or mutilate,” which was actually printed on the bottom of the IBM punch cards that served as student registration cards.
The PC revolution
In 1975, a group of people started to gather in the Bay Area who turned out — in some ways — to be even more revolutionary than the student activists of the ’60s. These were the founders of the Homebrew Computer Club — some of whom were social justice activists — who started experimenting with and advocating for the use and development of small personal computers. Club members included Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, former anti-war activist Fred Moore, Morrow Designs founder George Morrow and John Draper, who spent jail time for defrauding AT&T after developing a way to illegally make free long-distance calls by using the same tone emitted by a toy whistle packaged in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal. Draper, nick named “Cap’n Crunch,” and I crossed paths in 1981 when he wrote the code, and I wrote the manual for IBM’s EasyWriter word processing program. I later wrote a manual for one of George Morrow’s personal computers.
During those early years of personal computing, visionaries talked about how PC would free people from the shackles of big corporations, universities, and government agencies. They were seen as empowerment tools, and in many ways, they were and still are. As someone who spent many hours as an undergraduate activist using a mimeograph machine and megaphones to get the word out, I certainly appreciated the ability to create leaflets on a PC, and later, to communicate electronically. Today’s activists on both the left and the right are using social media as their mimeograph machines and megaphones. I wasn’t in the Bay Area during Homebrew, but I was an early adapter of online services having accessed computer bulletin boards and early online services starting around 1979 and later writing two early books on how to use PCs and modems to communicate.
Back to the ‘mainframe’
I’m writing this column on a remote computer, though I have no idea what type it is. It’s probably not a mainframe but it may as well be. Even though I’m accessing it from my home PC, the actual processing and data storage is taking place somewhere else. Like that terminal I used back in the late ’70s, my PC is functioning as an input/output device. The processing and data storage is taking place somewhere else.
The same is true when you do a Google search, access your email, check your calendar, prepare your taxes online, apply for medical insurance or anything else you do online these days. Now we call it cloud computing instead of time sharing, but it’s the same principal. There’s even the acronym “SaaS,” which stands for Software as a Service. Many companies these days do their accounting, inventory management, scheduling and nearly all of their other computer tasks via cloud services that host their software and store their data.
The same is true for your smartphone. Yes, it has storage, memory, and a fair amount of processing power, but most of the apps you use are connected to servers that do the actual work. Your phone is basically a portable computer terminal connected via the cellular network or Wi-Fi to big machines located elsewhere that are typically owned by big companies. Smartphones are a throw-back in yet another way. Like early PCs, before the advent of the browser, nearly every application requires its own software program which we call an app. But that’s fodder for another column.
Rekindle the PC pioneer spirit
I’m not itching to get back to the days of standalone personal computing, but it may be time to rekindle the spirit of those early PC pioneers and start thinking about how we can use technology to unshackle ourselves from giant institutions like those that control social media, search and online commerce. I’m not calling for the abolition of big players, but I do think it’s time to hold them more accountable to the people whose lives they impact. Dare I say, “Power to the People?”
Disclosure: Larry Magid is CEO of ConnectSafely.Org which receives financial support from Facebook, Google, Amazon and other tech companies who he’s arguing here, need to be more accountable.
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