Are you ready for some COVID football?
Players who participate in the 2020 season will sign documents agreeing never to see their grandparents in person again, ever.
Many of you were shocked by the sudden news on Friday that high school football has been canceled. All is not lost. My colleagues and I have drafted a proposal for New Football.
It’s imperative that we play football. And by “we,” I don’t mean just kids on high school football teams. I mean everybody who is able to play, from preschool to nursing homes.
If, back in late January, everybody had just run outside and started playing football, our morale would not have sagged, and everybody would have gotten lots of cold fresh air, and we wouldn’t be in the terrible mess we’re in right now.
Now, we’re going to make some modifications in high school football which will make the game safer. In fact, when we get these procedures in place, one of the safest places in the world will be a Connecticut high school football field.
1. The snap count. The quarterback will now be allotted two minutes for each snap count. The snap count can be a time for important communication and sharing. A typical snap count might go, “Set! Hut-1, Green 18! Anybody feeling flushed or having chills?, 98.6! That’s a good temperature! Nasal swab right! Nasal swab left! Everybody still feeling OK? Oleander! Not an FDA-approved therapy! Hut! Hut! D3! Is a vitamin that may boost immunity! 686 F-stop on 2! That’s an actual play! Ask your doctor if Remdesivir is right for you. Hut!”
2. The huddle. Players will stand 12 feet apart and discuss the upcoming play on Zoom. An assistant equipment manager will run onto the field with a rolling Purell cart and squirt everyone’s hands.
3. The line of scrimmage. If the ball is on the offense’s 20-yard line, the offense will line up on its own 10, and the defense will line up on the 30. Otherwise the opposing linemen are going to be all scrunched down, breathing hard, faces just inches apart. That’s crazy, right? Nobody wants that.
4. Face mask penalty. Under the new rules, the referee will assess a 15-yard penalty for not wearing a face mask, a 5-yard penalty for wearing a face mask in a manner that does not cover the nose and a 10yard penalty for that thing where it’s kind of pulled down under the chin. What is up with that?
5. Game structure. The first half will run for 30 minutes of actual chronological time. For example, from 4 to 4:30 p.m. After that, teams will quarantine for 14 days before playing a second half. As a result, most teams will only play three times.
6. Thanksgiving Vaccine Bowl. We’re pretty excited about this. By late November, there’s gotta be a vaccine, right? At least, that’s what the good people at Spee-Dee Immunology tell us, and we have contracted with them to get some of the first doses. The vaccines will be berryflavored and only last five hours, but that’s five hours in which we can play football the way it’s meant to be played and probably allow tackling for the first time all fall. According to Spee-Dee, the monkeys who drank the vaccine became superintelligent and broke out of their cages, so that’s promising, right?
7. Family waivers. Players who participate in the 2020 season will sign documents agreeing never to see their grandparents in person again, ever.
8. Spectators. Each team will be allowed five spectators at any one time, with the understanding that people will leave and let other spectators come in every few minutes. We’ve done some tests here at the athletic conference headquarters, and five is the lowest number of spectators that can do The Wave.
Now, the most important issue is when the New Football season will start. The answer is now.
We have to get these games going right away, and the reason is that the pandemic is going to get worse as the months drag on.
The reason it’s going to get worse is because of activities which do not exercise our abundance of caution, such as women’s volleyball and math.
Still, the superintendents will try to blame us, and they’ll say, “Maybe you should stand even farther apart and be tested every five plays and maybe not even use a ball so everybody isn’t constantly touching the same surface.”
Every time we get something figured out, they move the goalposts. Speaking of which, how about this? If the game is tied after regulation, each team picks up one set of goalposts and tries to move it down to the other end zone faster than the other team.
This is just one of the ideas we’re spitballing.
Which is just a figure of speech, we’d like to assure you.
Colin McEnroe’s column appears every Sunday, his newsletter comes out every Thursday and you can hear his radio show every weekday on WNPR 90.5. Email him at colin@ctpublic.org. Sign up for his newsletter at http://bit.ly/colinmcenroe.