{"id":12450,"date":"2020-07-23T16:59:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T16:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/?p=12450"},"modified":"2020-07-22T17:27:47","modified_gmt":"2020-07-22T17:27:47","slug":"fandemic-series-eddie-george-shares-thoughts-on-sports-with-no-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/sports\/fandemic-series-eddie-george-shares-thoughts-on-sports-with-no-fans\/","title":{"rendered":"FANDEMIC Series: Eddie George Shares Thoughts On Sports With No Fans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Three legends in their respective sports recently sat down with BetOnline to discuss playing during the coronavirus pandemic. Robert Horry, Eddie George, and Harold Reynolds all shared their thoughts with BetOnline about whether they would play in this environment and how they would react to not having fans in the stands among other topics. The entire video is available<\/a> on BetOnline\u2019s YouTube channel, and Eddie George gave us some notable comments on the impact of not having fans in the stands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are strange times in the sports world. There will be no fans in attendance for the remainder of the MLB and NBA seasons, and it appears that fan access will at best be extremely limited for the upcoming NFL season. That will create particularly strange circumstances in football as 100,000-seat stadiums might be virtually empty for both the college and pro games this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eddie George played college football at the third-largest stadium in the country during his time at Ohio State, and the former Heisman Trophy winner had this to say when asked how it would feel to play without fans:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not fun. You need the energy to feed off of whether you\u2019re home or\u2026you need the fans to support you when you\u2019re down and trying to figure out how to force through adversity as a team, and you need the fans\u2019 support.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=HYVVLPMzgiI\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Home field advantage has long played a part in every major sport, but that advantage will be somewhat muted without a vibrant atmosphere cheering on the home team. BetOnline estimates that home field advantage in the NFL without fans in the stands will be cut in half, and notoriously difficult stadiums to play in will be a comparative breeze this season. George added:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to feel like a spring practice if you will, it\u2019s going to feel like a glorified scrimmage. It\u2019s not going to have very much meaning without the fans, it\u2019s going to have a different feel.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hopefully, the absence of fans doesn\u2019t have this much of a negative impact, but it has certainly had an adverse effect on European soccer matches. Teams are pumping in crowd noise and placing cardboard cutouts of fans in the stands to give the matches some atmosphere, but it has been obvious that there has been a much different feel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fans\u2019 inability to impact the momentum of the game was one of the biggest detrimental factors that Robert Horry mentioned in the interview. George concurred with that sentiment by saying:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRob was talking about those big moments, you know, being on the road especially like in the Black Hole in a playoff game, the AFC Championship Game. You can hear the crowd making a big difference in terms of hearing at the line of scrimmage, especially when you\u2019re backed up in your own end of the field and they are on top of you. It makes a big difference.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Black Hole was one of the most difficult places to play for years when the Raiders were respectable, and the Titans experienced that firsthand in the 2003 AFC Championship Game. Oakland knocked off Tennessee 41-24 in that game to make it to the Super Bowl, preventing George and the Titans from making it to their second Super Bowl in four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teams like Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Green Bay, and Seattle will be more impacted than others by the loss of a distinct home field advantage, so it might be wise to bet against them early in the season, especially since all four teams are generally favorites of the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a decidedly more\u2026sour note, George also described what it was like traveling to take on rival Penn State in Big Ten play:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI remember playing in college, going to Penn State. Having to walk through that tunnel out in Happy Valley and the fans are throwing batteries and bottles filled with urine. Those are the things that create memories.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To see more clips from the series, check out our YouTube channel right here<\/a>!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three legends in their respective sports recently sat down with BetOnline to discuss playing during the coronavirus pandemic. Robert Horry,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":12455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12456,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12450\/revisions\/12456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}