It must seem so silly to the intelligentsia.
Unemployment hovers at catastrophic rates. A pandemic still lingers like a slow-moving storm. Yet here we are sweating sports. It must seem all so trivial to highbrow types, who see sports - to paraphrase the film Annie Hall - as "pituitary cases stuffing a ball through a hoop."
We can't explain to them why baseball, basketball, and football are essential to so many of us. But I can explain to you, the fan, why these games are vital to us, and the intolerable void we've felt over the last four months. So as we've seen MLB bicker for months before they finally agreed on a season that will hopefully happen, and the NBA struggle in an Orlando bubble, we have to wonder how football is going to start on time, if at all.
The NFL had the luxury of a five-month cushion to figure out how, where, and when to play their games. But as social distancing has morphed from a suggestion to a mandate, it's hard to imagine these monstrous men colliding into each other for three hours, while the effects are somehow mitigated by these new rules the league announced. The league has banned postgame handshakes and jersey exchanges; meetings must be conducted virtually when possible; a player's equipment must be disinfected after use; and masks are required unless it interferes with "athletic activities."
For those who love sports but are in love with football, these mandates are silly, and almost everyone will see the staggering contradiction. Players can lunge at each other, pound and tackle each other, and linemen can collide head-first on every NFL play. But, an athletic endeavor defined by brute force can survive all this punishment without contracting COVID-19 because lockers are six feet apart.
Making matters worse, the NFL announced that masks are not required for coaches or players on the sideline. Steelers fans (like yours truly) who adored Bill Cowher also remember his frothing sideline sermons, where spit would explode from his mouth, and these wet exchanges are exactly how the virus is spread. For every stoic football coach like Bill Belichick, there are dozens who rely on high-volume motivation, on chest-bumping and high-fiving. In other words, they could be walking incubators for the coronavirus.
As the NFL gets its players from colleges, it also often gets its cues from these schools, too. And right now, we're watching college football programs stumble and scramble to salvage their seasons; the Ivy League has already postponed football until 2021, the Big Ten is musing over a conference-only schedule, and many colleges are considering online courses as a replacement for on-campus classes.
At some point, the NFL must make an explicit statement. Either they're guided by fears of COVID-19, or are defying them. Pro football players - mostly men in their twenties and in their physical prime - are not really the threatened demographic when it comes to the coronavirus. Most if not all of them who contract it will barely feel it. According to the CDC, approximately 135,000 people have died in the United States from COVID-19, but there are only 770 deaths in men between ages 25 and 34, and if you look at males between 15 and 24, the number of deaths is 142. So, between February 1 and July 4, fewer than a thousand young men have perished, or 0.0067 percent of the total.
If the NFL charges into their season, on time, it would align with their haunting acronym-based nickname, "Not For Long," which is based on the cutthroat nature of the business. There's a reason a conga line of coaches get fired after every season, and a reason why players hold out for more money while they're valuable. Everyone who participates in pro football knows that you will be canned the moment you stop winning or producing.
The average NFL playing career is barely three years, so you can understand why players live for today: they know they will soon be disposable. And as much as the NFL slings slogans about family, the game is about conquest. These silly rules about masks and jerseys are just subterfuge. In a year when we haven't been able to get a straight answer from anyone about anything, the NFL can plow through the hot air, tackle the risk, and just play the darn games, coronavirus be damned.
Follow Jason Keidel on Twitter: @JasonKeidel
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