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NFL Should Hold 2020 Coronavirus Season In Two California Bubbles
Bubbles are working for the NBA and MLS. The NFL should follow the NHL's lead and have one bubble for each conference in Northern and Southern California.
www.forbes.com
The Shield released a preliminary coronavirus testing plan for its 32 training camps, with a monumental testing task for the expected 80-man camp rosters and a still large effort to test 53-man teams in the fall. And that total doesn’t include team and league staff and media.
Meanwhile, as we’ve seen with the NBA and MLS, bubbles work! It took a while for the two leagues playing down at Disney World in Orlando to isolate the teams from the players and staff who tested positive for COVID-19 but it worked. Neither league has had a positive test in over a week. That bodes well for the NHL, which plans on holding two bubbles outside the U.S.
Right now the NFL is looking at MLB to see if a season played outside a bubble can work. But it doesn’t have to be that way, NFL! It’s not too late to formulate a bubble plan and play out a season safely.
The NFL, of course, is not on board with a bubble at all.
View: https://twitter.com/tompelissero/status/1273329566799577088?s=21
Is this an ideal plan that I’m proposing? Absolutely not. But nothing is ideal as the country passes four million confirmed cases. But having the NFC play its season out in a bubble in the Los Angeles area and having the AFC play its season out in a bubble in the Bay Area eliminates the travel, the flights, the hotels and situations which teams have less control over. Sure, you lose interconference matchups, but you make it much less likely that the virus is contracted if teams are isolated in one geographic area.
In Los Angeles, games will be played at SoFi Stadium— the new home of the Rams and Chargers— (the Rams play all their games at home), the L.A. Coliseum, the Rose Bowl and Dignity Health Sports Park, where the Bolts played since they moved from San Diego. The Super Bowl would be played at SoFi.
In the Bay Area, games will be played at Levi’s Stadium, the Oakland Coliseum (the Raiders ironically get their old home back), Stanford Stadium and California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley. The AFC title game would be played at Levi’s.
Games will be spaced out throughout each game week as to prevent wear and tear on the fields of each venue. In weeks where all 32 teams are playing, there will be a Thursday night doubleheader, one Friday night game, five Saturday games, six Sunday games and a weekly Monday doubleheader. The Friday Night Lights package should bring in big money for the league, offsetting some of teams’ gate receipts for not having games with fans in 2020.
With college football in doubt this year, the NFL can expand its reach and have three Saturday windows, one game at 1 p.m. eastern, two at 4 p.m. eastern, and a doubleheader of games beginning at 7:15 and 10:30 eastern. Same goes for Sunday, just add one game in the 1 p.m. eastern window. Games at venues will be spaced out so there’s at least two days in between matchups so that end zones can be painted and the playing surface can be revitalized as best as possible.
Coronavirus cases still need to go down in the L.A. area for this to truly be a foolproof plan, but with 31 cases per 100,000 residents, per the latest New York Times -1.2%NYT metrics, that’s still lower than Dallas County, about the same as Houston’s Harris County and more than three times lower than Miami Dade County. In the Bay, San Francisco County is at 12 cases per 100,000, Oakland and Berkeley’s Alameda County is at 10 and Santa Clara County is at 10 as well.
If you’re a sports league in 2020, you want to have and maintain as much control and limit the variables and vulnerabilities as much as humanly possible. It’s working with the NBA and MLS. It can work for the NFL, too.
