MARLINS OUTBREAK BAD SIGN FOR NFL?
After Marlins outbreak, this NFL season appears headed for coronavirus trouble
The Major League Baseball season could crumble and 150,000 Americans can die, but maybe this country won’t truly take COVID-19 seriously until it wipes out our national religion: the NFL.
Baseball has gone sideways quicker than an errant pitch toward home plate by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Truth be known, when a coronavirus outbreak forced the Miami Marlins to postpone their home opener Monday, I’m not sure if 10 people in their hometown really cared.
But football is life here in Broncos Country. Can you imagine the angst in these parts if the pandemic forced Denver to say “No game today” on any given NFL Sunday?
I’m not a worrywart itching to shut down football season before it even has a chance to begin. I’m merely a realist who believes the NFL has been living the same ignorant denial that has smacked baseball upside the head only one weekend into the now shaky MLB season.
For too long, the NFL has pretended the coronavirus will magically disappear by July … or September … or Christmas. Who needs science when you’re banking on a miracle? Or so we’ve been told at least 20 times by the president in charge of the mess this country can’t seem to escape.
Despite Broncos management’s best efforts to keep players and coaches healthy, the notion that grown men who wear a Denver uniform are going to live voluntarily under self-imposed house arrest like football monks for the last five months of this year without being forced to retreat inside a bubble seems like naïve folly, at best.
As it stands now, if a coronavirus
outbreak forces the Broncos to shut down operations in the days immediately before the Chargers visit in November, what is Denver going to do? Take a forfeit against a division rival?
While any weekend without NFL football on television would be tough medicine for America to swallow, would it be crazy to suggest the league reconfigure the regular-season schedule now, giving every team a bye week in October, November and December to make allowances for the possibility of make-up games?
In a country so smug in our American exceptionalism we have yet to construct a nationwide network with the capability to get COVID-19 test results back in a timely fashion to thousands of working-class Americans, Nuggets forward Paul Millsap, who’s paid a $30 million salary to play basketball, recently skipped a mandatory test while confined to the NBA bubble.
While we desperately want baseball to give us back a piece of normalcy, whenever a Rockies pitcher got in jam down in Texas over the weekend, Rockies manager Bud Black had trouble keeping a mask on his face in the dugout.
I mention this not to condemn either Millsap or Black, who are both fine human beings, but to illustrate a point.
In America, we mean well. The road to more than 50,000 new cases nationwide per day is paved with good intentions. But we can’t be bothered to take the virus seriously until it smacks us upside the head.
So we keep on rolling the dice, because gambling with our health doesn’t take as much effort as rolling up our sleeves to tackle this pandemic together. Masks are a flimsy defense unless we all view them as mandatory gear. Tests are pretty much worthless unless the results are readily available in 48 hours or less.
You want to see the Rockies shock the baseball world and make the playoffs?
Dream of being an eyewitness as Drew Lock throws a touchdown pass to Jerry Jeudy to beat Tennessee on a gorgeous Monday night in September?
Hey, I’m with you 100 percent. Sports are my life, not to mention my livelihood.
But the Rona don’t care. Until there’s a vaccine, playing sports outside a bubble is asking for trouble.