Great cover on the Philadelphia Daily News today: “Hoagies of Mass Destruction.”

The Philadelphia Eagles are banning outside food and beverages from their new stadium, Lincoln Financial Field, opening next month (“No More BYO Food for Eagles’ Fans,” by Don Russell, p. 3.):

Team officials said, in a post-9/11 world, outside food is a security threat. In a statement, team president Joe Banner said: “We have chosen, in consulting with security experts, to error [sic] on the side of caution. In our opinion there is no room to debate that, at this time in our history, this is the proper thing to do.”

The Eagles, you will not be surprised to learn, have a lock on the concessions inside the stadium, but, according to the Daily News, “Banner rejected any allegation of money-grubbing.” Instead, he took a page out of Tom Ridge’s playbook:

“It is patently irresponsible in this day and age to question the motives behind a policy driven by and recommended by security experts,” he said. “There historically are a minuscule number of Eagles fans who bring their own food to our games. To suggest that for this minuscule number of people and dollars we would create a policy that will require additional security and time-consuming searches -- just to possibly make a couple of dollars -- is in our opinion totally irresponsible. There is no basis whatsoever for any such accusation.”

“Patently irresponsible in this day and age to question the motives.” Mustn’t ask questions, don’t you know.