Virus weary sports fans grateful to NFL

For at least a few minutes there Monday – and, honestly, maybe more – the entity that controls so much of American life was able to push past the novel coronavirus and seem important again. The NFL, we are relearning from the confines of our homes, takes a back seat to nothing. Normally, that includes baseball, basketball, any other sort of ball, not to mention “Game of Thrones” or the Academy Awards. This week, the NFL withstood a pandemic. No wonder Roger Goodell makes $40 million a year.

American enterprises that have continued unhindered in the midst of this global crisis include - what, exactly? Not education or entertainment. Not retail or restaurants. Maybe a company such as Zoom, which provides video conferencing for people who no longer can be in the same room. Or Slack, which allows those of us working remotely to communicate with co-workers who are on their couches, too.

The point: This affects us all, so the list is short. And really, it contains just one sports entity: the National Football League.

There are those among us – (looks in mirror) – who, at a time when we’re being told not to order a beer at a bar or have an in-person conversation with a pal, were stopped in their tracks by just one bit of Monday news: The Houston Texans traded DeAndre Hopkins to the Arizona Cardinals for . . . what?

And so, off the mind went. Kyler Murray now has Larry Fitzgerald and Hopkins as options to throw to. The Internet was not a kind place for Texans Coach/General Manager Bill O’Brien, who got 28-year-old running back David Johnson, whose only 1,000-yard season was four years ago, in return from the Cardinals, along with a second-round draft pick. There was time to think about roster construction and salary cap constraints and all manner of the normal March news that, in a normal March, would compete with the NCAA tournament for sports headlines.

In our current reality, Hopkins-to-Arizona was our oasis in the desert, a sports conversation in a sports-less world. If you received even a modicum of distraction or enjoyment – or even if you became furious – thank the NFL. That’s what sports are supposed to be here for.

That the NFL is pushing forth when nearly everyone else is stopped in his or her tracks fits with the league’s reputation and power. The league was the first American circuit to understand that it didn’t have to rely on merely 16 (soon to be 17) games of the regular season to dominate conversation. Make the draft a must-see event, then the discussion during the run-up will be essential for those who want to sound informed. No other league could sell 300-pound 22-year-olds performing a standing broad jump as content. The NFL has successfully marketed that as must-see entertainment.

So now the league is taking the challenge of coronavirus and making only minor modifications. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that gatherings of 50 people or more cease for the next eight weeks. That would include the draft, slated for late April in Las Vegas. The NFL’s response: No problem. Just ax all the public events and move on.

“The clubs’ selection of players will proceed as scheduled April 23-25,” the league said in a statement Monday. “The NFL is exploring innovative options for how the process will be conducted and will provide that information as it becomes available. The selection process will be televised.”

Mark it down: It will be the highest-rated draft – ever.

There’s nothing the NFL can’t figure out. By so many measures, the league has endured turmoil dating back years. Go back to the suspension of Ray Rice after sickening domestic violence charges in 2014. Carry that through to Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem in 2016, the widespread anthem protests the following season, the president calling the players “thugs” and Kaepernick’s continued unemployment.

There have been damning reports of how the league handled evidence that football can cause long-term damage to players’ brains and mental health. There was debate over how the New England Patriots inflated their footballs. There was even internal bickering among players before their union ratified a new 10-year collective bargaining agreement over the weekend.

That all seems like strife. And yet, what evidence is there that the league is truly suffering? Of the top 16 rated television shows from 2019, 11 were NFL games. Just two other sports events – the Alabama-Clemson College Football Playoff championship game and Game 7 of the World Series between the Nationals and Astros – cracked the top 10.

Given that perch, it’s no wonder that, even as life as we know it shuts down, the NFL looked at its calendar, noted that the new “league year” – which essentially means the start of free agency – is due to begin at 4 p.m.