NFL expects to play full season from September
LOS ANGELES: While the coronavirus wreaks havoc on the global sporting calendar, the NFL said on Tuesday it planned to have a full season, including games in London and Mexico City, and to kick off on time in September.
With a little over five months to go before the 2020 season is scheduled to begin, the NFL has yet to entertain the idea of delaying or shortening the campaign or having its 32 teams play games in empty stadiums.
“Our planning, our expectation, is fully directed at playing a full season starting on schedule and having a full regular season and full set of play-offs,” NFL executive vice president Jeff Pash told a conference call.
“Am I certain? I’m not certain that I’ll be here tomorrow, but I’m planning on it, and same thing, we are planning on having a full season.”
A number of major sports events around the world, including the July 24-Aug 9 Tokyo Olympics, have either been postponed or cancelled in recent weeks because of the rapid spread of the coronavirus.
The NFL, America’s richest and most watched sport, remains the only major North American professional sports league that has managed to avoid suspending the playing of games because of the coronavirus given its traditional late summer start date.
The league, however, has closed team facilities for the time being, cancelled its annual owners’ meeting scheduled for this week in Florida and made major changes to the April 23-25 NFL Draft in Las Vegas.
The NFL also said it was discussing a “virtual offseason” programme that would allow teams to share video and playbooks with players before eventually launching into the regular season.
When asked about any contingency plans for the 2020 season Pash said the league, which plans to release full details of the schedule around May 9, remains “pretty confident” the campaign will go on as scheduled.
“All of our discussions, all of our focus has been on a normal, traditional season starting on time, playing in front of fans in our regular stadiums and going through the full 16-game regular season and full set of play-offs,” said Pash.
The NFL’s 2020 season features four games in London and one in Mexico City, all of which Pash said the league expected will be contested as scheduled unless health authorities tell them differently.
“We’re optimistic that just as we expect conditions in the United States to permit playing a full season that will be the case for our international partners as well,” said Pash. “But obviously that’s something that we will have to work closely with the authorities, public health and other government authorities in those other countries to make sure that it’s entirely safe.”
EXPANDING PLAY-OFFS
NFL team owners voted on Tuesday to add two more teams to the league play-offs starting with the 2020 season, according to a posting on the league’s website.
The decision came during a conference call involving NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and club owners, a move required after the annual league meeting was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Under the plan, the American and National conferences will each add a seventh team for the post-season, with only the top seed having a first-round bye instead of the top two clubs as under the previous format.
Making the change required approval from three-quarters of the NFL’s 32 team owners.
There will now be three first-round games on Jan 9, the opening Saturday of the play-offs, with three more the next day. Top seeds will meet the lowest remaining seed in each conference in second-round games.