I'd rather not have sports without fans, as I shared in this space yesterday.
But I'd still rather have sports.
And the more that people in professional sports are speaking publicly about competing in empty stadiums and arenas, the more seriously the concept should be getting taken. Already this week, word emerged that Major League Baseball's weighing empty venues, that the NHL and NBA have each considered tournament-style, single-arena settings for their respective playoffs, and now, yesterday, even the NFL made a similar noise.
Football's got the luxury of waiting the longest, of course. So it's no surprise that Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL's chief medical officer, acknowledged to NFL.com that his league will be more follower than leader. As he put it, "The NFL will not be charting a course different than other professional sports, other parts of society -- college sports, universities, businesses."
The interview, conducted by veteran reporter Judy Battista, is exceptional and recommended. It also represented news, at least as far as I can discern, in that Dr. Sills became the first prominent league official to put forth how such events could occur without putting participants or others inside the venue at risk.
Plain and simple, it's incessant testing.
Battista didn't quote Dr. Sills on this directly, but she did paraphrase the following, verbatim, and attribute it to him: "The widespread availability of point of care testing -- where a test could be administered, and the results returned quickly -- will be critical to decisions about when teams can report to facilities. Such tests would have to be administered to players and other team personnel, perhaps frequently. Those tests are not currently available. Sills said he is confident they eventually will be, but he can't say when."
I've done enough reading on this subject, sad to say, to know this is what's happened in China, South Korea and Australia when those countries attempted to restart sports, in these cases soccer, baseball and Aussie-rules football:
Professional baseball brings much needed relief to many in South Korea. VOA's William Gallo has more. @GalloVOA @VOANews https://t.co/0dr4doE0cc pic.twitter.com/9l3nDoPc9q
— VOA Public Relations (@insidevoa) April 2, 2020
The participants, the coaches, all personnel, all game and league officials, all stadium/arena operators and, yeah, all media were being tested on the way in and out of the venues. These have been simple fever tests, since, as Dr. Sills qualified, more advanced rapid-fire testing is still very rare. If someone shows a fever, among the earliest symptoms of coronavirus, they're quarantined.
This, obviously, won't be good enough. As everyone other than the governor of Georgia can attest ...
Analysis: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who resisted strict coronavirus measures, says he just learned it transmits asymptomatically.
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 2, 2020
Health officials have been saying that for two months. https://t.co/o6EIWJN32p
... coronavirus can be completely asymptomatic and still be just as contagious. So checking for fevers is as flawed an approach as it sounds. But the more advanced tests that are now being assembled for mass usage in the U.S. promise a hard, definitive result within minutes. The current ones don't sound all that pleasant -- picture a rubber pencil being shoved up one nostril than down through to the throat -- though that, too, will likely be simplified soon.
So if everyone's clean at the entrance, and no one else is allowed in or out ... what's the worry?
I don't work at Pandemics R Us, but that strikes me as the safest possible setting in this current environment. And if the participants stay in controlled conditions outside the competitions, presuming anyone would deem that to be additionally necessary, that's conceivable, as well. Mark Cuban, the NBA's most prominent Mt. Lebanon native, has proposed for the tournament scenario having everyone stay at a universal hotel that could be cleaned out at some pristine level.
It's not appealing, to reiterate, but the resumption of professional sports, broadcast out to the world, would offer more than just entertainment. It'd restore at least one small sector of the economy with all the many jobs involved -- full disclosure: I've got one one of those -- as well as the flow of dollars from the networks to the teams to the advertisers and beyond. Any money that changes hands amid this ongoing economic collapse will be healthy.
Not now. Not soon. My goodness, we're barely allowed to budge from our homes at the moment. But once all these clouds start clearing a bit, this might be as encouraging as it gets toward having actual games again.
• Once that happens, we can engage in the next level: Testing fans heading into stadiums and arenas.
Hey, we walk through metal detectors now. Adding a nostril violator, tongue depressor or whatever doesn't seem that big an additional deal.
• Yesterday should've marked the 134th home opener for the Pittsburgh Baseball Club, the 20th at PNC Park, and the first chance for Kyle Crick to fight the Reds.
That's depressing enough that Alex Stumpf and I stood before the shuttered ticket windows on General Robinson Street for Morning Java:
• Pirates 8, Reds 4, by the way. Cincinnati's got something in common with a certain other Ohio team when it comes to spending stupidly and claiming offseason championships. Those guys are going to butcher the ball with a blunt fork while in the field.
• Rob Manfred, apparently not content to allow coronavirus to bury endless criticism of Major League Baseball's commissioner, shamefully made known that the yearlong suspensions of the Astros' Jeff Luhnow and A.J. Hinch won't carry into 2021 no matter what becomes of the 2020 season.
Among countless problems of a lawyer being commissioner is that they'll govern with an undue fear of litigation. This guy operates in a structure that includes the famous 'best interests' clause, one that basically allows him to get away with anything. But he instead tiptoes around potential lawsuits.
• Who'd hire those two, anyway?
If they aren't radioactive across baseball, I'll be genuinely surprised. No GM, no manager, no matter how good, is worth the grief Luhnow and/or Hinch would bring.
• Justin Turner, the Dodgers' outgoing redbearded slugger, went public yesterday to express a wish that baseball will mimic the NHL's overtime/shootout format and end extra-inning games with a Home Run Derby of sorts.
"Instead of playing 17 innings, you get one extra inning, you play the 10th inning, and no one scores, then you go to a home run derby," Turner told Los Angeles' Spectrum SportsNet. "You take each team's three best hitters and you give them all five outs and see who hits the most homers. You know, you wanna keep fans in the stands until the end of the game. I know when I go to hockey games, I actually enjoy watching shootouts. That keeps me in my seat."
First off, if anyone's staying in their seat at an NHL game in hopes of a shootout, if that's their main motivation, then they've been stuck watching one hell of a lousy hockey game.
Second, not every team has three players who'd reasonably be able to participate in any such competition, never mind the potential impact on their swings.
Third ... I'm very much open to anything, even this, that shortens games.
• When one opens ESPN's website or app, both of which are the industry's gold standard for online tech, the menu currently lists the following six options, in order of popularity: NFL, NBA, NCAAM, SOCCER, MMA, MLB ... then dumps all the rest into an additional scrolldown:
Some of this, I'm sure, is based on ESPN favoring the sports they broadcast. That's how they've long rolled, and it might -- that's might -- explaining relegating the NHL to et cetera status. But ranking baseball sixth in that particular pile ... ouch.
• That neat poll taken by the NHL Players Association this week included some odd but fun nuggets such as Connor McDavid being the players' choice by a huge margin -- 63.4 percent -- as the league's most exciting player. He's unquestionably that. Takes the breath away with every touch of the puck.
But man, they blew it big-time when asked this: "Of all players past or present, who would you pay to see play?"
The replies saw Wayne Gretzky get 31.83 percent, Bobby Orr 14.99 percent, Mario Lemieux just 9.24 percent.
I never saw Orr play, but I'd have a much easier time digesting Orr -- the single most transformational player in hockey history -- as winning out than Gretzky. And even if I'd seen Orr, I'm certain I'd have wound up choosing Lemieux, who only did most everything better than everyone who ever lived. This result only reveals they've hardly even seen highlights and that they went with the name they thought would be the correct answer.
• Most exciting baseball player I ever saw was Randy Johnson. Most exciting basketball player ... Michael Jordan. Most exciting football player ... don't hate me for this ... Antonio Brown.
• Big victory for Pitt in ACC play yesterday, by the way ...
#ICYMI: Scientists from @PittDeptofMed announced a highly scalable potential vaccine for the new coronavirus behind the #COVID19 pandemic.
Read more about this possible treatment and the researchers behind it here: https://t.co/UCNXpd4dDv
— University of Pittsburgh (@PittTweet) April 2, 2020
... as in All-Coronavirus Crushing.
Imagine the same university from the same city taking down two global catastrophes less than a century apart.
• We'll get there. We will.