Moving this over from the Youth / Coaches board:
I stand by my assertion that, even if the outbreak is extant come August, the NFL season will proceed in some fashion or another, due to its political value, connections, the political demographics of who NFL fans are (you think Trump wouldn't like to be perceived as the guy who saved the NFL's season?), and the fact that they only derive 14% of revenue from live attendance. You might argue that it would be ill-advised to do so, and you might even be right, but I think it'll happen regardless for the sake of the national psyche. Barring a player strike, I guess I shouldn't discount that possibility.
[Sports] Just ain't gonna happen till there's a vaccine. <...> Maybe pro sports find a path to come back sooner but not any time before what... Jan 2021? The NFL sure as hell ain't kicking off in Sept. without a vaccine.
I wish I could bet substantial amounts of money towards charity against this, because if need be (and need won't be), President Trump himself will intervene to make sure that FOOTBAW! continues, even if only on TV. They would sooner have all the players' families go on total isolation quarantine along with those of every coach and support personnel in each team, for a month prior to the opening of training camp and then through the entire season, than they would delay the season by even a week. I mean, shit, the teams already travel to away games via private charter flight as it is.
I take your point that it's an impracticality for them to get risk down to zero. However, there's some combination of quarantining the athletes, coaches and decent amount of sideline staff, and letting go (or having them not attend / do something different) of a number of non-essential game day staff. The "huge number of people in ancillary roles" is not some ironclad requirement to hold a football game. High schools do it all over the country without much fanfare. The NFL did it for decades before their budgets got huge. That staff bloat is a convenience to them, not a requirement. If athletes have to carry their own bags and maybe coaches have to carry their own clipboards a bit, nobody is going to die, which is kind of the actual question.I think this approach to football, even at the NFL level, doesn’t take into consideration the huge number of people in ancillary roles that would be required to have a game, even if there was zero paid attendance. And most of those people don’t get paid enough for their game day roles to be quarantined from everyone else the rest of their week. So it would be impossible to have this be anything other than a huge potential for viral transference, not only among those at the stadium, but then to their non-football networks.
So either the country is back to “normal” or there is no NFL season this fall.
I stand by my assertion that, even if the outbreak is extant come August, the NFL season will proceed in some fashion or another, due to its political value, connections, the political demographics of who NFL fans are (you think Trump wouldn't like to be perceived as the guy who saved the NFL's season?), and the fact that they only derive 14% of revenue from live attendance. You might argue that it would be ill-advised to do so, and you might even be right, but I think it'll happen regardless for the sake of the national psyche. Barring a player strike, I guess I shouldn't discount that possibility.