Coronavirus and NFL – Will they get their turn?
By STEVE KING
The NFL is the only pro sport – and one of only a few major sports at any level, anywhere – to have all but skirted the coronavirus thus far.
Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NHL and college and high school sports have all taken a huge hit in terms of in-season games, or training for such.
The NFL is being affected in a big way, too, but just not as much. Every team, including the Browns, has had to all but eliminate travel by scouts and other personnel in getting ready for NFL Draft and, to some degree, also the start of the free-agency signing period.
But the NFL’s day of reckoning may well come, and it would do so in the form of the ever-popular draft in just less than six weeks. The draft, of course, is so very popular that it has become an entity all to itself. There are countless fans whose football focus is solely the draft. They don’t pay much attention to the season. When one draft is over, they shift their concentration to the next year’s draft.
As such, then, if this coronavirus and NFL situation affects the draft, forces it to be moved from this year’s site of Las Vegas or rescheduled for a later date, then the NFL will have taken a real shot to the gut. It won’t be as bad as missing games, certainly, but it will nonetheless be significant.
It’s hard to imagine that this pandemic will still be raging like this come late July when training camps open or, worse yet, in early September when the regular season is set to begin. As bad as the current situation is, those two, especially the latter, would be much, much, much worse. By then, missing pro football games that count in the standings would be the least of our worries.
Before: Coronavirus and NFL
