The stadium crowd COVID control measures, or lack thereof, adopted among the 32 NFL teams are reflecting the country’s larger divide about the pandemic.
That inconsistent approach hasn’t worked in the country. It won’t work in the NFL. Or in college football. Or in high school football.
Here’s the truth. I assure you I don’t like it any more than you do. But the pandemic will be an even bigger problem for football at all levels this season than it was in 2020.
We are in complete denial. We want to believe things are back to “normal.” We got that notion a couple of months ago when it looked like we might be emerging from the muck. And we ran with it.
Then we started acting like idiots again and stuck it right back in the soup.
Things are not as bad as they were a year ago. They’re worse.
That’s not guess-work. That’s not speculation. That’s not alarmism. That’s not being Chicken Little.
That’s math. That’s science. That’s virology. That’s COVID. That’s Delta.
As we football guys like to say, “The Eye in the Sky Don’t Lie.”
The fuse was lit over Labor Day Weekend. (Again.) Yes, I loved the football. I reveled in the football. I worshiped the football. I took comfort in the football.
But just as we have to do to enjoy a movie fantasy, I had to suspend disbelief.
Because I know what’s coming. And you should, too. It is now baked in. This gun has been loaded and this bomb has been armed. We could not stop the explosion now any more than we could have stopped Ida.
Because we’re just not very bright.
So, LeGrande L’Orange is going to be an announcer on the “gamecast” of this weekend’s fight in Florida between Evander Holyfield and Vitor Belfort? Well, I guess it’s at least thematically consistent. One has-been talking about two others.