With pro football teams beginning preseason games this month and college teams having camps, both the NFL and the NCAA are cautiously hoping that somehow they can make it through this season without games being delayed and/or
postponed and rescheduled due to COVID-19. That hope may prove overly optimistic looking at the soaring rates of infection across the nation, in particular throughout the South.
The NFL has already announced that not only do they not have contingencies in place for teams that might not have enough players in place for a game, but if teams cannot take the field with a complete roster there will be forfeits. They also initially said BOTH teams involved in that situation would lose game checks if they couldn’t play on the scheduled date. There was a lot of backlash from the NFLPA, and it’s now not completely clear what may happen should there be outbreaks and teams not able to play.
College commissioners, most notably the head of the SEC, are also saying they don’t plan to reschedule games. They have also floated the idea that teams may have to forfeit if outbreaks prevent these teams from playing a scheduled game, and they are putting pressure, both implied and direct, on coaches to encourage players to get vaccinated.
The biggest problem remains a lack of policy consistency in both the NFL and NCAA. The league has so far not made any announcements on whether stadiums will be allowed to have full or partial attendance, though the CDC is still urging social distancing at all events, indoor or outdoor. Colleges also don’t have any set rules about attendance, and it’s most likely that SEC schools will try to pack as many people into the stands as possible.
It’s easy to understand why both organizations are so hesitant about trying to establish firm rules that apply to all teams across the board. They can’t comfortably establish mask mandates for fans in the stands in states where governors have gotten national publicity by issuing executive orders against them. The NFL can only go so far with a unilateral action, and there remain players on almost every team that either haven’t been vaccinated or refuse to do so.
Minnesota Vikings QB Kirk Cousins and Houston Texans wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins are two prominent players who’ve made public announcements that they wouldn’t get vaccinated. The Vikings fired, then reinstated, an assistant coach who’d refused to be vaccinated. Cousins has since said he’s being careful in his associations, but the fact a starting QB is willing to roll the dice and take chances can’t make the league feel good.
What happened last season in Denver, when at one point the Broncos had all three QBs out with the virus and had to put a guy behind center who hadn’t played QB since high school for a regulation game was a major embarrassment. Meanwhile, the NCAA also doesn’t want a replay of last season, when some teams played a full schedule and others didn’t due to late starts because of virus concerns. There have already been stories coming out of college camps about individual players contracting the virus, though thus far fortunately no team has reported a massive outbreak.
Neither the pros nor colleges can force anyone to get vaccinated. Despite the wealth of information that has been made publicly available, there remains a lot of societal resistance to both vaccines and wearing masks as a precaution. No matter how many stories are written or reports aired on television showing hospital rooms filled to capacity and infection rates rising at almost unbelievable paces in states like Florida, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana, this anti-vaccination, anti-mask trend continues, and there are football players who’ve embraced it.
This is going to be another interesting season, to say the least.
