If customers who incurred unnecessary expenses to attend the NFL game in Canton that wasn’t played in Canton (or anywhere else) on Sunday night want to be reimbursed for those expenses, they’ll have to hire a lawyer.

The Hall of Fame has posted at its website the procedures for obtaining a refund, and the policy refers only to the price of the tickets. The window for obtaining refunds will be open through August 31.

The statute of limitations for taking legal action will be open much longer, and depending on the specific principles of Ohio law the available compensation could exceed the price of the tickets significantly, including travel costs, lodging costs, and other expenses related to a trip to Canton for a game that wasn’t played. Given that the cancellation occurred as the apparent result of NFL/Hall of Fame negligence, tort-type damages beyond the actual expenses could, in theory, be available.

Ideally, the league would affirmatively offer to compensate angry customers for all financial losses, since the failure to stage the game ultimately arose not from an act of nature but from an incident of gross incompetence for which the NFL is ultimately responsible. The NFL most likely won’t do that, because it knows that its fans/customers aren’t going to quit being fans/customers over something like this.

With only one team winning the Super Bowl every year, NFL fans are used to being disappointed. As overall NFL-fan disappointments go, traveling to Canton for a meaningless game that wasn’t actually played is far less disappointing than, for example, seeing their favorite team fail to make the playoffs or (even worse) losing a playoff game or (far worse) losing the Super Bowl.