Could NFL Play Its Season In An Isolated Location?

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – The NFL is the one league going forward with business as usual during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Free agency is going as planned and the only adjustments to date are canceling upcoming organized team activities, and the NFL Draft is still taking place April 23-25 but no longer a public event in Las Vegas.

The start of the NFL regular season is not until the second week of September but preseason and training camps begin in mid-to-late July. Currently, training camps are about 14 weeks out from happening and there are currently many states on a “shelter in place” order to slow the spread of COVID-19, and who knows when that will be lifted.

One would think the NFL would start making alternate plans, especially since college football athletic directors are not so sure their season will be played as usual.

There is the official plan which is to go as normal. That is what the league’s general counsel, Jeff Pash, told reporters on a conference call by saying, “all of our discussions, all of our focus, has been on a normal, traditional season starting on time, playing in front of fans in our regular stadiums.”

Each time a question was asked in regards to the season being adjusted Pash responded with some variation of the season will go as planned.

At some point, the NFL will need to talk about adjustments but right now they are under the impression that training camps can get underway in late July and a season can begin about six weeks later. That seems extremely optimistic, according to KSL Unrivaled.

Playing In A Remote Location?

One idea that was floated by a league general manager was to take all the teams to a location free from coronavirus, tests everyone on the way in, and then sequester the entire league for the full duration of the season.

There are a few issues with this and the big one is if there will be a place in the United States that can be considered free from coronavirus. Also, is there a place large enough to house NFL teams and build enough fields to play a full season or even part of a season?

Would they be able to play games as usual and mostly on Sundays? That would require at least 14 fields, or would there be fewer fields but the games are spread out more over the week to have multiple nights of NFL football?

What are the NFL ceilings for @PresMoss2 & @juicewilliams__?
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Scott Mitchell and Alex Kirry like unique ideas.

“Under the circumstances, they would celebrate going about and doing it. From our perspective, normal is out,” Mitchell said. “This idea, which sounds actually ludicrous, makes a lot of sense.”

Kirry is in agreement with this because people would watch any resemblance of live sports and specifically the most popular sport in America.

“My goodness, SportsCenter was putting up cricket matches that had no fans in the stands,” Kirry said. “They are showing this because it is literally the only thing that is on. That is why the NFL is considering it. If they can figure out a way and get the general public to sign off on it by not thinking it was irresponsible because you have to weigh that.”

Fans and non-fans would likely be on board if there was some sort of element of the NFL giving back to areas that were hit hard by COVID-19 to charities in their respective city or state. That would give the NFL some good grace in returning to the field.

Plus, getting the NFL back on the field would go a long way to feel like America would be moving on and recovering even if it was just having fall Sunday’s back to at least semi-normal with football.

“I think sports is such a huge part of people to be able to escape it will just be even bigger,” Kirry added. “When people are desperate to see sports, I just think this is very interesting [to play games in a remote location].”

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