As Florida Combats COVID-19, Thousands Will Attend Miami Dolphins Games

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Players for the Miami Dolphins take a break between practice drills during training camp last Friday. When the regular season begins, they’ll be playing in front of a smaller-than-normal crowd due to coronavirus restrictions.

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Garfinkel says for now, seats will be sold for the first University of Miami home game against University of Alabama at Birmingham and the first Dolphins game against the Buffalo Bills on September 20. Garfinkel says, «After that, we’ll take a look and see where the numbers are. If they get a lot worse, it’s very conceivable we could have a situation later in the year where we don’t have fans in the stadium.»

A few other NFL teams including the Kansas City Chiefs, the Atlanta Falcons and the Dallas Cowboys have also said they will have a limited number of fans at their home openers. Several teams have said they won’t have fans for their first home games. The prospect of some teams playing at home before fans, while others compete in empty stadiums has raised concerns it could provide an unfair advantage. When he heard Monday about the Dolphins decision to allow fans, Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott said, «I think it’s honestly ridiculous that there will be, on the surface, what appears to be a playing field that’s like that — inconsistently across the league with the different away stadiums.»

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