Readers may have noticed a higher than usual percentage of sports coverage for RedState Monday compared to an average day. And I’m about to raise the quotient even more with this piece. There’s an incredibly simple explanation for this phenomenon: Americans miss their sports! Yeah, I figured you could guess that one.
First up, in a piece that could have stuck to just baseball, RedState’s Brad Slager cast a wider net than the big, weekend story on Miami Marlins players and coaching staff members coming down with the Wuhan coronavirus; the increase in infections, if it continues across the MLB in coming days and weeks, could careen into other, completely unrelated sports’ seasons — much like NBA players catching coronavirus back in the spring delayed Major League Baseball’s own season by nearly four months.
On a related note, there’s now word on what the coronavirus safety protocols and pre-season schedule for upcoming, NFL season will look like, after an agreement Monday between team owners and the players union, on the heels of the two sides announcing Friday to start rookie training camp on the normal date.
Following the announcement, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell released a statement noting that the 2020 season will “undoubtedly present new and additional challenges” but that the league is committed to playing a safe season that will culminate “with a Super Bowl.”
As a follow-up, in an email with the subject line, “A note from Commissioner Goodell,” Roger Goodell addressed the league’s fans about the season:
As MSN Sports notes, Goodell left out details on one, significant change to the 2020 season that has nothing to do with keeping players free from viruses: there won’t be any preseason games at all. Apparently, the guys making millions of dollars in the jerseys were dead-set against doing any more work than they absolutely had to.
My colleague Thomas La Duke also wrote about the NFL today — and it’s bad news for Mr. Goodell and the ownership groups: the league is set to lose $5 billion — unless it finds a way to get the cities where they play to allow fans to, you know, congregate and return to their stadium seats sometime this season. Who really knows, at this point?
Anyway, this was the money quote from Duke:
There is also the fact that the NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, has molded the game just a couple steps away from playing flag football. Who wants to watch that on Sunday afternoon?
Great question, Duke. I don’t know about you all but the way things are looking, Americans just might treat Goodell’s letter one of two ways: either quickly mark it “return to sender,” or — as my dad used to say — chuck it in the round file.
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