A stupid question or a question of stupidity?
With Patriots-Chiefs game, NFL is pressing its luck
We all hope we’re smart enough to see stupid coming. Especially when it involves our loved ones and ourselves. Especially when it involves COVID-19.
That’s why I’m having such a difficult time understanding what the NFL is doing by putting the Patriots on a flight Monday morning to play at Kansas City at 7 p.m. on national television.
Look, we all saw stupid coming early on at spring break with the viral videos from revelers on the Florida beaches and those legendary words, “If I get corona, I get corona. I'm not gonna let it stop me from partying.”
We saw stupid coming when nearly a half-million bikers decided to descend on Sturgis, S.D., for its annual rally. And whether you want to believe hundreds or hundreds of thousands died from the resulting COVID spread, the decision to allow the 2020 event will not be remembered as an exercise in intellect.
And R.I.P. Herman Cain after attending that indoor Trump rally in June without his mask.
Yes, we saw stupid coming Saturday when SMU campus police had to clear out the student section during the Mustangs’ 30-27 AAC victory over No. 25 Memphis because a large majority weren’t following COVID protocols.
SMU has been allowing 1,000 students to games. Masks are required when six feet of social distancing is not possible. Well, this is Dallas and this is Texas. And you probably can guess the rest: “My daddy owns a car dealership and my boyfriend’s daddy is in oil and nobody is gonna tell me what to do. What do you think this is? Connecticut? Rhode Island? I was born in a hospital bigger than Rhode Island.”
SMU staff and security couldn’t get the students to comply, so they had to clear the section. Athletic director Rick Hart already had appealed to fans after last week’s home game. So what happened? As soon as SMU scored, video appeared of kids ganging together, without masks, going delightfully crazy.
Or fatally stupid for a few. We’ll see.
And what of that Top 10 battle between Georgia and Auburn? I was flipping around three college games early Saturday evening and was surprised by the number of fans as ESPN cameras panned Sanford Stadium. The SEC set capacity rules and for Georgia it’s a 20-25 percent range (up to 23,186 fans). Far too many for me, but anyway …
Sanford sits 92,746 and as someone who has seen 23,000 at 40,000-seat Rentschler Field, it sure looked like a lot more than that to me. Forget my guesstimate, others who know far better about Sanford tweeted the same observation. And there were large gaggles of fans not abiding by the rule to wear masks if not social distancing.
Georgia announced a crowd of 20,504. It will be interesting to see if the SEC demands a recount. And we won’t even get into all the folks who skirted the rules on tailgating by tailgating off campus in Athens. Or maybe it will all be, wink-wink, OK. In that case permit me to quote that famed SEC and Bama star Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
More than 209,000 Americans have died from COVID and 7.41 million have been infected. The latest numbers show declines in three states, increases in 21 and half hold
ing steady. Heading into the winter months and more inside activities — despite what presidents, their minions and dreamers say — we’re not close to eradicating COVID. Even if a vaccine was produced tomorrow, it’ll take months.
No, I’m not a doctor. I just play one in this space. (as well as lawyer, philosopher, ethicist, general manager, coach, scout, wizard and participle-dangler). Still, I like to think I have a modicum of common sense.
And when you see our president, the president of Notre Dame, U.S. Senators, Cam Newton and much of the Tennessee Titans and Notre Dame football teams test positive in recent days, you also would like to think common sense would prevail. When the most powerful man in the Free World, the team with the direct pipeline to God and the quarterback for the smartest man in the world get COVID, nobody’s safe.
It didn’t take Anthony Fauci and the great medical minds of our day to see potential problems with all those important people sitting so close to each other without masks at the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett at the White House Rose Garden. I was watching it on Sept. 26 and the thought hit me. Now think about all the interaction at that event and the ones to follow.
Maybe I’m the most naïve person in America, but I’m praying President Trump recovers fully from COVID to continually warn
Americans about social distancing, masks and all the appropriate protocols. Even if his ego gets the best of him let’s hope he stops after saying, “Hey, I’m tough as they come, it got me and I’m lucky.” And, dear God, please don’t let him start launching into, “This China flu isn’t so bad. I beat it no problem.”
As far as professional athletics, we know the protective bubble, continued testing and all its regulations works. Soccer proved it. NHL proved it. NBA and WNBA proved it. With the MLB headed into the playoff bubble, baseball took enough hits, lost enough games, had enough COVID positives to know it ducked into safety just in time.
The NFL got lucky through three weeks. Or they were so good at protocol that it even had me — a dedicated non-conspiratorialist — thinking they were hiding some results. And then the Titans hit. Greg Mabin went on the reserve/ COVID list Sept. 24. Linebacker coach Shane Bowen’s test came back positive on Sept. 26 and didn’t go to Minnesota for 31-30 win over the Vikings on the Sept. 27. Other tests on the team were coming back negative. So everyone else did, traveled, lodged, suited up, together.
Here’s the thing. We have heard this several times during coverage of President Trump’s COVID case. Positives often don’t show up for four, five, six days. There is an incubation period. Sure enough, Sunday marked the sixth straight day that at least one member of the Titans’ organization had a positive
COVID result. They’re up to 20 total.
The good news is that no one on the Vikings has tested positive. And that could help in examining data on how dangerous the actual game is. Yet the Titans are Example A for how quickly it can spread within an NFL team. The Marlins and Cardinals already demonstrated it in baseball.
Yes, the Patriots all have tested negative in tests since Saturday night. Yes, they will be tested as late as Monday morning. That’s a couple of days. And then they’ll climb aboard a flight in a cabin together to KC? I mean, what could go wrong?
Cam Newton won’t play, won’t be on the trip, but how many people did he have contact with last week? Lots. Is the NFL so focused on getting to the bottom of what Titans players or employees broke protocol and caused the positives, that they aren’t thinking about what could happen Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday with the Patriots? A massive fine against the Titans won’t protect the Patriots, will it?
Is the NFL so greedy, so intent on a big AFC matchup, its TV ratings and, most importantly, not disrupting its schedule — one that can’t include doubleheaders like baseball — that it’s willing to push on and let the COVID positives fall where they may?
Color me stupid, but I had to ask.