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It’s early May 2020, and the only major sport that has yet to be affected in a significant way in America is the NFL. This is mostly due to it being a fall sport. The NFL has been able to plow forward with Free Agency and the Draft without even really slowing down, but that’s all just paperwork anyways. How will Covid-19 actually affect the NFL? Nobody knows, but in the spirit of my in-season column, Statistically (in)Significant, I’m going to go ahead and wildly speculate on 5 scenarios for the 2020 NFL season.

Scenario 1: The NFL goes on as planned, overcoming the enormous logistical challenges related to Covid-19. The schedule will be released tomorrow and it’s set in stone. Opening day goes on as planned on Thursday, September 10^th with the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs hosting the game. All of the games are played with little or no fans in the stands, but at all of the stadiums we’re used to seeing. It’s very creepy for the first few weeks, but by October everyone is making jokes about it and we’re all used to it. Thanksgiving has the usual 3 games, we get all of our Thursday night football, Monday night football and when the playoffs start, we get a super-sized wild card weekend. The Vikings keep piping in crowd noise, just like back at the old dome.

Scenario 2: The NFL is the only game in town, and they get creative. Still no fans, but without any college football going on, the NFL takes over Saturday by the end of September. We get 7 different game slots every single weekend. Football is the only thing that anybody can talk about for months. The NFL is bigger than ever. Without having to worry about fans’ schedules, Goodell calls an audible and they start flexing Monday Night Football games halfway through the season. The 9 different game slots that are now available for Thanksgiving weekend (all watchable games thanks to flex scheduling) results in a bump in the divorce rate. Lawyers are thrilled, network execs are thrilled, and people who aren’t football fans really get sick of all of us. The Vikings keep piping in crowd noise.

Scenario 3: The NFL season starts late. This one has already been laid out by the league, stating they could start as late as October 15^th. Bye weeks are eliminated, unmercifully for the players. The week between the championship games and the Super Bowl is eliminated, mercifully for the fans. The Bears and Packers both host games during brutal cold or blizzards during late January or early February. The Super Bowl is played on February 28^th, the latest ever. The Oscars are scheduled for that day and there’s a brief standoff between the movie industry and the NFL. We know who’s going to win that one. NASCAR gets the Daytona 500 interrupted by the second round of the playoffs. Both of the top seeds who had a playoff bye make the Super Bowl because it’s insane to expect a professional football team to play 18 straight weeks without any sort of relief. Maybe teams rest players in smaller groups later in the season, driving fantasy managers insane.

Scenario 4: The NFL starts, either on time, or in some sort of delayed fashion, and cannot finish the season. The dreaded second wave of Covid-19 comes and we’re all under stay-at-home orders for the last couple months of the year. Far too many players and support staff contract the virus, and even Jerry Jones hosting the entire NFL inside a bubble in North Texas can’t save football. The season gets postponed at first, causing chaos throughout the fantasy football world. Smart commissioners who hashed out contingency plans before the season started feel vindicated, but all the people in their league complain about the result anyways. Chaos ensues, players hate the owners for making them play in (more) dangerous conditions. Some fans hate the players for refusing to play. Others hate the owners for making them play. The entire situation gets far too political and it turns people off to the NFL for years to come.

Scenario 5: There is no NFL season. There is no such thing as social distancing during a football game. Even without fans, it takes a couple hundred people to make a game happen and to broadcast it to the world. Lots of coaches, refs and support staff are older and would be in the at-risk category for complications if they contract Covid-19. How would we ensure everyone is safe? Let’s say, conservatively, each club has 100 people that need to be around each other on a regular basis to make this whole thing run. You also need a TV and officiating crew, as well as local medical personnel, so that’s 250 people per game. How often do you test? Once per week? That’s 80,000+ tests needed just so the NFL, a non-essential business, can get started. What happens when someone gets infected? What happens when a whole team gets it? Will players refuse to play if their opponents have tested positive, even if those people have been quarantined? Putting on the great spectacle that is the NFL is already a huge logistical challenge when there’s not pandemic going around. Completing a full season of 256 games plus 13 more playoff games, and, oh yeah, 64 more preseason games just might be too much to ask for when most of us might not even be able to go to a bar to watch any of these games. The crowd noise at Vikings Stadium finally falls silent.