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In late March, we floated half jokingly and half seriously that the NFL might consider playing the 2020 season in a remote location with enough fields, bedrooms, and food and everything needed for 256 regular-season games and 13 postseason games. There is no reason to think that the NFL has seriously considered the possibility. Given the current state of the pandemic, especially in the United States, perhaps it should have.
Maybe I still can.
Sports that have created bubbles across the league, such as the MLS, NHL, and NBA, are working well. Baseball, which is not in a bubble, is struggling, just a few days after its season.
The NFL will sink to 32 minipumps from July 28 to September 10, 13, and 14. Regardless of whether and to what extent individual teams experience outbreaks during camp, the test comes when it comes time for teams to travel to other cities and play games, with 22 boys sweating, breathing, coughing, spitting, and bleeding each other. another in closed spaces.
Given the 24 hour delay between collecting a sample and generating a result, there will constantly be a positive test thread hole (at least until reliable point-of-care tests are developed). If a player’s Saturday test is negative, allowing him to play on Sunday, and his Sunday test returns to positive on Monday, he may have removed the virus from his teammates and opponents during a game.
In a sport like baseball, players are generally not on top of each other. When they are, it is brief. In soccer, they will constantly be on top of each other.
It remains to be seen whether the non-bubble approach works for football or not. Some members of the soccer media (including some whose paychecks are signed by Roger Goodell) have raised the question of whether other members of the soccer media are encouraging the failure of soccer. Frankly, that’s precisely the kind of pig-headed attitude that put the country in this mess in the first place.
People who raise real questions and concerns about the virus are dismissed as “Karens” or “coronabros” by those who want to engage in stupid and / or selfish behavior, and who are encouraged by power-hungry politicians and cash pursuers. members of the media for which there will be a special place in hell. Nobody wants to hear the truth, because the truth goes against what we want to do and how we want to live and what we believe, so if we simply ignore the truth, then it is not our true.
It is one thing to handle political problems that way. It is quite another to handle real-world, life-or-death issues with the kind of pink blinders that really endanger others.
That is what happens with the pandemic. While some can (and will) count statistics on the chances of dying from COVID-19 compared to the chances of being killed by a falling cell tower or buggy or pack of rabid hamsters, none of those things is contagious. COVID-19 is. So even if it doesn’t kill you, it can kill whoever potentially, if not inevitably, passes it on to you.
This is why responsible members of the media care about the situation, and that is why responsible members of the media ask questions, raise concerns, and lobby for approaches that strike the right balance between making games play games and do not expose the general population to unnecessary risk of illness and death.
The key phrase in Chiefs guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif’s announcement regarding his decision not to play in 2020 was not simply a statement of personal belief, but his clear, albeit implicit, view of how the rest of We should feel, “I can’t afford to potentially transmit the virus to our communities just to play the sport I love.”
A bubble could allow the games to play, and the well-being of all NFL communities would be respected. So the question now is whether there is still a way to bring the 32 teams to a location that serves as a bubble for the entire league. It is probably too late to achieve this, but it is not too late to think about it.
Even if the start of the season had to be delayed until October or November to facilitate the construction and preparation of a closed campus where all the games would be played, there is a real possibility that it is the only way to get all 269 games in.
Or we can continue to pretend that everything will be fine and hope for the best and not be prepared enough for the worst and then wonder why any, some or all of the games had to be postponed or canceled.
