Should the Steelers’ appearance against the Cowboys in the Hall of Fame game happen, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said Tuesday it likely will be without fans.
The game is scheduled for Aug. 6 in Canton, Ohio, as part of the Pro Football Hall of Fame enshrinement weekend.
Former Steelers safeties Troy Polamalu and Donnie Shell and head coach Bill Cowher are among the players, coaches and contributors who are part of the Hall of Fame class. Last week, it was reported the Hall of Fame was optimistic it could host fans for its big weekend.
But DeWine, in an interview with Cleveland NBC-affiliate WKYC, said, “As much as I hate to say this, because we’ve all been looking forward to that, and I know how much it means to the Canton area and the Stark County area and really across the country, it’s a great great event that we’ve been looking forward to, [but ] having a crowd that size is highly unlikely. Certainly, it could not occur today. It would be very dangerous to do it today.
“Again, we have to see where we are at that point, but that’s a large crowd, a lot of people together. These are the things that we’ve talked about all the way through this as we open Ohio up and we get back to work and we get back to doing the things that we like, probably the last things that are going to be able to be open are the big crowds, particularly when you have big crowds that are close together. So we have to continue to look at it and make decisions as we move forward, but if the question was, ‘could that even occur today?’ the answer would be, ‘no.'”
The Hall of Fame reportedly sold thousands of tickets in record time when the teams were announced for the kickoff preseason game, but the odds of those fans being able to watch the Steelers and Cowboys doesn’t seem likely at this point.
Nothing about the Hall of Fame ceremonies has been finalized, and the league, Hall of Fame and local government are running out of time before a decision will need to be made. In the meantime, you will be able to find any updates on the situation right here at DKPittsburghSports.com.
