While We’re Waiting… Fantasy football in NFL stadiums?

While We’re Waiting is a space on the WaitingForNextYear website where we share links every day. We’ve been doing it for about four years or so. Denny Mayo used to be much more amusing with his intros, if you recall. You know the drill: Email us with suggestions at tips@waitingfornextyear.com.

Would the Browns ever try out an area like this? Do they need to? “Inside EverBank Field, during the second half of the Jacksonville Jaguars’ lopsided loss to the Kansas City Chiefs last Sunday, Carlos Boria finally found a reason to cheer. ‘Yeah, baby,’ he screamed as tight end Jimmy Graham scored a touchdown. But Graham is not a member of the Jaguars. He was playing for the Saints, about 500 miles away, at the Superdome in New Orleans. Boria’s cheer was part of the cacophony in the new 7,000-square-foot fantasy football lounge at the Jaguars’ stadium, where fans were primarily following not the game they had bought tickets to attend, but those in other N.F.L. cities involving players on their fantasy teams.” [Ken Belson/New York Times]

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Some final notes and numbers with the Browns-Ravens matchup: “The Ravens come into the game off an embarrassing loss to Denver to open the season. In that game, the Ravens gave up a franchise-record 49 points and allowed Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning to throw for seven touchdowns – only tying an NFL record. So this will be a walk in the park for the Browns, right? Well, not so fast. The Browns have lost 10 in a row to Baltimore by an average of 12.9 points per game. Cleveland also comes into the game off a disappointing and dispirited opening performance in a loss to Miami.” [Thomas Moore/The Cleveland Fan]

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Don’t you just love confused ref videos? This is great from the OSU-Cal first quarter last night. [Sean Newell/Deadspin]

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Very good/depressing stat here about the Tribe: “The joke is that the Chicago White Sox are so bad that they make everybody else look like a playoff contender. The reality is that they actually have made a contender out of the Cleveland Indians. With an 8-1 victory Saturday, the Indians improved to 81-68 on the season and a whopping 14-2 against the White Sox. That means when you take out Cleveland’s games against the White Sox, the Indians are a pedestrian 67-66 against the rest of the league.” [Doug Padilla/ESPNChicago.com]

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Have to link it up when this local sports aficionado writes about the attendance issue: “The standings show the Indians are in the middle of a wild playoff race. The stands in Progressive Fields seem to say otherwise. Once one of baseball’s top attractions, the Indians, who sold out 455 consecutive games from 1995-2001 during a golden era for the franchise, have been playing in front of many more empty seats than filled ones.” [Tom Withers/Associated Press]

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Speaking of attendance, I’ll let you click to see for yourself how this Tribe beat writer responded in his latest Q&A: “Hey, Hoynsie: How viable would Columbus be for the future home of the Tribe? At least they could remain in the state. Attendance is embarrassing. I live in California and I bet I have been to more games than most Clevelanders. I know times are tough there, but times are tough in a lot of places. Can’t blame this one on the Dolans. — Frank Galas, Los Gatos, Calif.” [Paul Hoynes/The Plain Dealer]

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Enough Cavs/Waiters talk to get you pumped for basketball to start soon. But again, this article is really long and really good. Tons of stats, too: “Dion Waiters, as we presently know him, was meant for a different time. Shot-happy, ball-dominant guards littered the league just more than a decade ago, before our understanding of efficiency’s impact had reached its slow development let alone modern zenith. That Waiters was one of just eleven rookie guards in the past 20 years to average at least 18 points per 36 minutes last season would merit universal praise in another era; today it’s just more evidence of his expectedly sloppy NBA debut, and further confirmation behind similar prospects of his career trajectory on the whole.” [Jack Winter/Hardwood Paroxysm]

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Finally, a nod to these amazing people who I’m proud to know as fellow Ohioans: “Ohio Army National Guard members who can’t be in the state for this month’s Akron Marathon plan to lace up that day for their own version of the footrace thousands of miles away at a base in Kuwait. The ‘shadow race’ around the U.S. Army’s Camp Arifjan on Sept. 28 is expected to include about 300 runners for the full 26.2-mile marathon, the half-marathon or a 5-kilometer race, and they’ll get some of the same perks as the 15,000 runners at the Akron event. A formal finish line is being shipped to Kuwait, and finishers will receive medals and shirts.” [Associated Press]