FOOTBALL ANYONE?

 

               The alignment of our planet with the sun dictates that autumn begins on September 22, but we know different, don’t we? It starts today, September 1. We know that because football is a fall sport that begins in earnest with the “S” month. Always has, always will.

               Except for this year. This year the pandemic reigns and September begins with not a pigskin being snapped in earnest at either the professional or major-college level. The colleges are in disarray, with two of the so-called “Power Five” conferences (the Big Ten and PAC 12) already having delayed the sport’s start until spring and the other three (the SEC, Big 12 and ACC) plunging forward, at least until further notice.

The National Football League is tiptoeing ahead, canceling pre-season games and scrimmages and holding practices of a sort as its September 10 starting date (a Thursday night game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans) approaches. But in Las Vegas, where the action speaks louder than words, it is only even money that date will be kept, and, no doubt, a longer-odds play that the season will be concluded successfully.

Back in June, when the pandemic was on the upswing, I addressed football’s prospects and found them wanting. Too many things could go wrong for a season to come off as hoped, I concluded. I still think so, especially with sports’ rolling racial boycotts now in play. I also was pessimistic about our three other major spectator sports even though they involve fewer athletes and, thus, fewer risks.

 As it has turned out, basketball and hockey have implemented “bubbles” to resume play, albeit in narrow confines and before empty arenas. Baseball limps along sans bubbles on broader stages, with each day’s schedule at risk to positive tests as the virus still percolates and regional spikes continue. Thirty one MLB games have been lost to virus-related cancellations, knocking schedules askew. A couple  more hard knocks would endanger the whole enterprise.

Hockey’s smartest move was to put its resumption in Canada (specifically in Toronto and Edmonton), where pandemic control has been far more successful than in the U.S.  That the NBA also is doing well is mostly a tribute to its players’ apparent willingness to live monk-like existences within the league’s Orlando, Florida, ring. Who knew they could do that? Can they keep it up?

The NFL leads the world in hubris but despite its bravado looks anything but confident as opening day approaches. Sixty six players and five game officials have opted out of playing this year and one could hear knees quaking around the league as 59 players tested positive before training camps opened two weeks ago. Most of those players returned after sitting out quarantines and there have been no reported positives since, but training camps offer the sort of mini-bubbles that won’t be replicated as travel for games begins.

The foundation of the NFL’s return plan is its ability to bull to the front of any and all lines and obtain a level of virus testing that, as far as I know, exists nowhere else in the U.S.  Daily testing of every participant began with the training camps and will continue until September 5, or until local positive rates dip below 5%. One report last week said that the league had used about 150,00 tests to that point.

Television reports from the NFL camps show a sort of football-like activity but not the sweaty, rigorous drills usually associated with the bruising sport. With its summer warm-up camps limited to about two weeks, baseball has had an unusual spate of injuries in its truncated season. Unless about 70 years of experience amounts to nothing, the casualty lists should be long when (if) football gets back into action.

Further, the NFL’s once-a-week play and 16-game schedule puts a premium on every game that doesn’t exist elsewhere. Baseball has been able to make up for lost games with seven-inning doubleheaders. No such option exists in football. What would a playoff picture look like if some teams play 16 games while others play 15 or 14?  Commish Goodell would earn his salary making those calls.

If the NFL season’s viability looks shaky, it is rock solid compared to that of the college game. Return-to-class reports from campuses around the land have revealed the sort of knuckleheaded behaviors and student contagion rates that have tilted national rates upward, including (indeed, especially) in states whose university teams play in conferences that remain determined to play football later this month. The U of North Carolina, an ACC school, reported 784 positive tests among enrollees last month, the U of Alabama (SEC) 1,000-plus, the U of Missouri (Big 12) 166. No breakdowns were reported but some of those kids have to be footballers, huh?

 Some schools in those conferences have canceled opening home games scheduled for early this month, including North Carolina State (ACC) and Iowa State (Big 12).  Two SEC members—Tennessee and Auburn—cancelled practices last week after positive virus tests.

Everything is political these days so it’s probably no accident that the collegiate will-play/won’t -play divide has mostly “blue” states on the cautious “won’t” side and “red” states among the gung ho “wills.” To say this is disturbing is an understatement; college sports are played by kids but run by adults who are supposed to look out for their welfare. Putting that second to make a buck or a point  buck is reprehensible, but no surprise.