Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Grappling with playing football in COVID times

Episode Date: July 15, 2020

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Matthew Collar here, as always, to talk about an excellently written article by Mark Schofield of USA Today. How are you, Mark? Matthew, I'm doing well, buddy. It's great to be with you. I'm excited to talk about this piece, although I know it's got some negative connotations, which I'm sure we'll get into, but it's great to catch up with you, great to see you again, and excited to be here. Well, I promise you we will definitely do this again where we just break down quarterbacks because normally that's what I look for with your work.

Going quite a ways back, you've always been a guy where I've said, I want to know what Mark thinks about this quarterback. But you wrote this piece called At What Cost Football? And I want to start out by the way that you started out in the article. You write about the risks of playing college and NFL football this year. And I've felt a lot of the same things, but haven't been able to express them nearly as well as you did in this article. But I think that it's worth talking about what football means to us first and how badly we want to see them play and how hard it is for people like you and I to admit that there's a possibility that it might not be the right thing to play.

Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And, you know, Matt, I started the piece with like my own background in the sport. I talked about my very first Pop Warner game when I was nine. I talked about my very first play where I was a running back and running 25 quick and how I was immediately hooked on this game. You know, you see, and I've gotten some feedback on this piece, you know, positive and negative, and a lot of the negative feedback tends to be, and I'm sure you've seen this too when you talk about the realities of the situation we're living in.

People are like, oh, well, you want to see football get canceled. No, I absolutely do not. Because if football gets canceled, A a i don't get to watch this game that i love that i have loved since i was nine years old and b there are professional ramifications for that because if football gets canceled i i don't know what i'm going to do in the fall i don't know what i'm going to do for a job because like so many others that have already you know fallen victim to furloughs and losing their jobs and you know economic and professional ramifications of this sport and you know the you know sports getting shut down that will come along to me as well and

so as somebody that has worked his way from starting out you know with no sort of background in journalism just writing about this game for free and now working his way to USA Today it would you know hurt me personally and professionally if the game gets canceled. So I don't want to see that. But at the same time, I think we have to sort of be honest about where we're at. And we're recording this on Monday. We just saw Russell Westbrook in the past couple of minutes announce he's tested positive for COVID-19. It's difficult to see how leagues are grappling with this, you know, basketball with

the bubble format and the NHL with their hub cities, and we're going to see Major League Baseball try to figure it out. Those are three sports that have smaller footprints. You know, we were talking about NFL training camp with some of the 90 players and then all the coaches and training staff and everything that goes into it, there are going to be players or coaches or training staff members or the like that test positive. And what happens then? Or let's say we get into a season and it's the week before, you know,

the Patriots-Chiefs game and Patrick Mahomes tests positive or Matt Moore tests positive. What do you do then? Do you have to forfeit the game? Do all the Chiefs players go into quarantine for 14 days? There are so many things to figure out, and we're on the cusp of training camp starting. So there's a lot to figure out. We all want to see football back.

But, you know, what I was trying to get at is we love it, we want to see it back, but figuring out how to do that is going to be tough, and times are running out. Yeah, from my perspective, I started this podcast and website thinking that there was a really high percentage chance that there would be a normal season, even if it was without fans, because back in May, it was like, let's quarantine for a while, socially distance and flatten the curve, and everything will be fine by the end of the summer. I think we all believe that we would just stay inside for a few weeks and this will go away and we'll come out on the other side. And the way the NFL approached the offseason was that they believed it would go away.

They did the draft. They did the schedule release. They did free agency. All normal thinking that training camp would come around and we'd be okay. That we'd just wash our hands, use a little hand sanitizer, and we would be good to go. But that is just not the case, Mark. Now that we've got more cases on a daily basis than we've ever had,

Arizona and Florida, I mean, they've got NFL teams there, and they are spiking. They have become the epicenter of the entire world. I saw an article that said that about Florida the other day. So do we send football players there now? Like we already grappled with this type of moral conflict with head injuries in football and things like that and how dangerous the sport is. Well, now you're ramping up the danger even more. And something that we know with these guys is that they have the mentality

that they're just going to go and play. They're going to out-football the virus. And I think that the NFL and college football, if they put players out on the field without having it be completely safe, they're kind of taking advantage of that mentality. Yeah, I think that's an incredibly important point, Matt, because if you think about this game, which we all love, the X's and O's, the schematics and all that stuff, at its core, it's such a wonderful game.

But you're right. It does sort of take advantage of the mentality that the best ability is availability, right? If you're hurt, if you're sidelined, if you're on crutches, if you've got a busted ankle, you're not helping the team. And so it's a mentality that is sort of fed into a lot of what we've discussed before this offseason, right, with head injuries and long-term ramifications for players and their health, you know, and we're still sort of grappling with that as people that cover the game, as people that love the game. You know, we wonder about the long-term ramifications, but especially at the professional level, you think, as a player, I got to be here for my team. I'm getting paid to do this. I'll maximize my time in the league, and I will worry about that down the road.

Well, now you add in this different layer with COVID-19, and, you know, we still don't know what this virus does to people. You know, we understand that for the vast majority of young, healthy adults, it's not going to be fit. You know, we've seen the overwhelming majority of fatalities have been in, you know, the older individuals that contract COVID-19 or people with severe pre-existing conditions. But we are seeing more and more recently indications that even for the healthy that survive this, there are lasting damage. There's lasting damage to organs such as the lungs, you know, such as the kidneys, such as the heart. And now we're seeing potential neurological implications of this.

And again, it's early. These are isolated incidents. We don't know. We haven't had time to do full case studies on these things. But if you add in the potential of lasting neurological damage to people who contract this, even those that don't suffer fatality from it, that's one more layer of this when we're already dealing with CTE and head injuries. And so, you know, another thing to keep in mind, you know, most football players, they're

in great shape, you know, but there are some of the pre-existing conditions. We've seen Vaughn Miller. He contracted this. He's an asthma sufferer, and he's still sort of getting back to full speed. And then you expand it and you think about some of the players, their families, and then, of course, the coaches as well. You know, some of these NFL coaches aren't exactly the picture of health and they don't really take care of themselves they're living at the office they're sleeping at the complex that they're not in the best shape physically if they contract this like what's going to happen to some

of those guys and so you know there are just so many things to think about here and you know the nfl they tried to go along business as normal. We all sort of expected, you mentioned, Matt, the schedule release. We expected them to maybe front load the non-conference games. So if, like, the schedule got, you know, shortened, if they pushed things back, they could just cut the first four games, play 12 games, not impacted. They didn't do that.

They expected, you know, when they released it in May, that things will be normal. Well, we're seeing the cases rise in Florida, where there are a number of NFL teams. Arizona, California is rising again. Obviously, Texas, you know, Houston is an epicenter of this. How could we start training camp here in like two weeks when Houston is in such a critical situation,

when Jacksonville, when Tampa, when, you know, Florida and California and Arizona? And then what happens? If we can't start creative camp on time how can we start a season on time there's just so many questions here to work through and when it came to other off-season stuff there were people that said oh this is being tone deaf and my thought was I don't know what else are we doing really here I mean if these things can go on safely and we're all at home doing nothing in need of entertainment, it's fine.

I mean, it's not much different than Parks and Rec doing an episode with a bunch of Zoom calls. But as we get closer to this, there's a feeling of how tone deaf are sports really being. They're getting faster testing and things like that. And even if it goes beyond what we're talking about with just risks of athletes we're saying like should they be really using these resources for entertainment I'm sure that leagues will twist themselves into pretzels to say that that's not what they're doing but I'm sorry you are and and something that really hit hard in your piece too was you said what costs are we willing to endure or accept to make football happen?

And I think it's worth repeating that we're sitting here in an offseason that's so interesting for the Vikings and many other teams, and I can't wait to see what Justin Jefferson looks like and all that. But when you're looking at the numbers and you see people age 20 to 40 have a chance of dying, like a 0.2% chance, and even though that feels very low, when you add it up, I mean, there might be a couple of players in there that pass away. The odds are that there will be.

So what's an acceptable number of players whose careers get ruined by lung damage or who die or coaches who get this and have serious ramifications? They are yet to tell us, Mark, exactly how they're going to prevent that from all happening. Yeah, and, you know, that's sort of the, like, sobering moment, you know, when you think about, you know, what we're all living through collectively as a society, you know, and there are obviously bigger discussions such as, you know, return of the school and things like that. Like, what is the acceptable level of death that we're able to live with as a collective society?

And, you know, obviously when you think about it in the football realm, it's different because, you know, it's sport. It's entertainment. It's not kids going back to school or starting the economy up again. But at the same time, you know, and the way I sort of worked through it and the piece I wrote, it's like as fans, as people who cover this game, you know, we've grown to accept the head injuries, the long-term ramifications, because the players at the NFL level, they're compensated for it. They know the risks.

They're willing to take those risks for the financial implications, the financial rewards of having an NFL career, and the fans that go along with that. But if they suffer a broken leg and they go home, they're not going to transmit that to a spouse or a parent or a child. This is something different. And so even if a relatively healthy player contracts COVID-19 and doesn't have long-lasting implications from it, what about their loved ones?

What's the level of risk of the level of potential transmission to others networks were willing to live with you know as fans of this game as people that cover this game and again you know we keep saying this but i think it is important because so many people will push back and say well you just don't want to see a season like for whatever reason no i ask we all want to see football but what are we willing to accept risk-wise for not just the players themselves, but for their loved ones, their children, their spouses, their grandparents and parents, and then obviously the coaches and stuff. There's so many layers to it just beyond the players on the field.

And, you know, yes, the players on the field, too, because if there is this, like, 0.4% chance that you know somebody will pass away in this age bracket okay well do the numbers how many players is that are we willing to see 10 players pass away from this because we wanted to see football about that badly maybe some are maybe some aren't I mean that's a more moral philosophical debate but the fact that we're having this debate still just feels wrong and I think the thing that really sort of hit it for me was last week when those protocols were announced, we all sort of lost our minds on Twitter, right? About no post-game handshakes, no Jersey swaps.

And people said, well, you know, it makes sense because you want to limit, you know, unnecessary interactions between people. And it's like, okay, they've just beaten themselves up, you know, one against another for three hours, you know, spitting, vomiting, sweating, beating up each other for three hours straight, but they can't give each other a high five after the game because that's an unnecessary interaction. Well, what are we really talking about here then?

Like if we can't protect them in that situation, why, how are we going to let them play football for three hours? And I think some of the players saw that, too. You know, it wasn't just the handshake and jersey swap. Then it was just the overall picture of just what are we doing? What are we doing here? Before we get back to the conversation, I want to remind you to go to SodaStick.com

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But imagine if we have several incidents that are just like that. Are we just going to kind of say that's too bad? That's a little too much on the harsh side of a mentality for me. As much as a gladiator NFL mentality is great and all, but that's a little too far for me. And I keep thinking logistically how this can happen and still be safe and still avoid that from happening. The NBA has a bubble.

The NHL, the WNBA, they've got about as close as you'll ever get to a safe situation. And I still think there's going to be some problems there. Even if the NFL cuts down on the rosters that they're bringing to camp, Mark, in your opinion, is there any way to make this work safely? I honestly don't, Matt. And that's the other thing that we need to think about, you know, certainly with professional sports, but also at the college level. You know, if you try to maintain, you know, as strict a policy,

as strict protocols as, you know, you go from your room to the practice field to the game site, and that is it. Maybe 90% of the people will adhere to that, but we're still talking about 20, 30-year-old young men. Like, let's be honest. Like, they're going to want to entertain themselves. They're going to want to go out and do things. They're going to want to go out and do the things they were doing before this and you know especially with the college level if you're

thinking about getting people back on campus what's going to happen on saturday night after a game at lsu do we really think everybody's going to go back to their dorm room and just go to bed and get up for sunday morning like probably not and it's the same thing with the nfl players like what are they going to want to do on sunday night after a game they're probably going to want to go out a little bit. And it's understandable when you're at that age and you're a single male, like haven't played an NFL game, you're going to want to go out and have a good time and forget about the game for a bit.

And so all it takes is even if all of the players, everybody within the organization does everything the right way, even if these players go out and they wear masks and they wear gloves and they social distance, it just takes one person without any association with the NFL, with whatever league, to maybe be feeling sick, but they got to go into work and now they're serving drinks. And the next day they test positive for COVID-19 while they've just spent three hours, you know, bartending, you know, with a bunch of NFL players and things like that. There's, you know, so many other potential ways to work your way into that bubble,

you know, even if you have a bubble scenario in place where you can see things going wrong. And it's just, there's just real life. There's just the reality of the situation. We're dealing with, you know, young athletes that might want to go out and have a good time. And even if they try to do everything right and they're perfectly behaved 99% of the time, it just takes one little slip up. And now you've got a family member sick, a coach sick, a player sick.

And now you've figured out what do we do when the week of a huge game with playoff implications and Patrick Mahomes or his quarterback coach test positive for COVID-19. And I can say this as a Patriots fan, I will just throw this out there. You know, one of the protocols that was announced was, you know, thermometers and checking temperatures.

Well, what's going to happen when a team comes to Foxborough and suddenly, you know, Lamar Jackson has a 100.5 fever on the Patriots thermometer. Like I can say it as a Patriots guy, I already coined it, you know, thermometer gate is coming kids, like thermometer gate is coming, kids. Like, thermometer gate is coming, so just be ready for that one. Right. Even if they do a great job here and keep the number of cases down and only a handful of players miss time,

and let's say we just treat those like ankle injuries, if that's the best possible scenario and we're going along in the season, but what do you do if a team goes on the road they arrive at a different location and all of a sudden 20 players test positive do you just forfeit the game do we delay the game and get tested again we have no answers to these questions and it sounds like other leagues don't have them either i was listening to a call with the links coach carol reeve the other day and she said that no one has told them yet what happens if they lose five players to COVID on whether they could sign players or get roster exemptions.

We just don't know anything about that part of it and how they're going to deal with all these issues. And then, additionally, there's the money situation, and it seems like that's a big battle that's going to be fought between the NFL and NFLPA. I mean, when you stand to lose whatever percentage of revenue that ticket sales make up, but also players want their contracts that they signed and the guarantees they were promised, but owners didn't expect to lose all of this money, the logistics are so overwhelmingly massive in how problematic they are. And as we get closer with no answers, my confidence market is just not super high,

and it's really painful to say that. Yeah, I mean, my confidence in figuring out anything close to a regular season with 16 games is diminishing by the day. I think, Matt, the financial and the labor issues are also something we're starting to see bubble up. I know there's either a call or a Zoom or some kind of meeting today between the NFL and the NFLPA, you know, because the owners are saying we want 35 percent of it put into escrow. The players are saying, no, we don't want that. We want all guaranteed money to be paid this year. We want to make sure we're still getting that.

And obviously the ownership is saying, like you said, look, we're not we're not gonna have fans in the stands like that's our big revenue maker here you know i think there are things that the league would be smart to try to do such as if we're all going to be stuck inside and nobody can go to a game find a way to make all these games available to either via streaming you know you know make direct tv like open it up for this season you know where everybody can pay 35 bucks and see all the games you're probably going to get a lot of people that would be willing to do that you know in a year like this in a climate like this so there are ways i think you can make some money you know to recoup some of the losses that are coming you know but it is you know certainly a question and you know

the thing with you know what happens when 20 players test positive well like in a basketball situation you know if you're in the bubble, you know, you're playing games like every couple of days, like you could theoretically like delay a game for a night. You know, we saw that with, I think it was Toronto FC and DC United and MLS. They had some players test positive. So they, you know, postponed the game to the next morning. They played it, I believe on Sunday morning. It was supposed to be a Saturday afternoon game to get some players retested.

But it's hard in the NFL, right? Like you can't really push a Sunday game back to, say, Wednesday and then ask these guys to go out and play next Sunday. Like it's too tough to do. And so, you know, is there a situation where they have to say, okay, well, to allow ourselves that possibility, we have to trim this to 12 games and insert some potential buys here in case something like that happens. You know, that might make some sense, but then the logistics might be too much to over cover and it just we

keep coming back it seems like you know at the end of every little discussion here is there's so many questions here and even we get the smartest people in the world sitting in a room trying to hammer them out we want to come up with some of the best answers. What's your guess? How do you think this goes? It's hard, you know, and again, we're sitting here, what is it, like July 13th or so? You know, it's hard sitting here right now to see how we can get a full 16-game slate started on time. I mean, training camps are supposed to be opening up here in two weeks. I don't see how that happens in Florida.

I don't see how that happens in Florida. I don't see how that happens in Arizona, in California. And, you know, we're also seeing, you know, as cases and things start to come down in New York State, where you've got, you know, obviously the Buffalo Bills and in that area, you've got the Jets and the Giants as well. You know, they're putting in 14-day quarantines for people that are coming from Texas and Florida and California and Arizona where a lot of NFL players live. And they're saying that, you know, we won't put those players into quarantine. Well, what happens if one of them then does test positive? Will they revisit that?

Will training camps get delayed as a result of all of this? And if they do, it's hard to see a season starting on time. And the other thing, and it gets to a point you made earlier, Matt, things can change in the blink of an eye. Like we thought like back in May when they were releasing the schedule and we had the draft and all that, that, yeah, you know, we're flattening the curve. The cases are coming down. Like we're going to get through this.

You know, we might have some semblance of a normal summer. That certainly changed. So things could change dramatically in either direction come say august you know next month you know who knows what the situation will look like on the ground in these various states so to put it together it's hard to see us getting a full season i do think the nfl is going to try to move heaven and earth to get some semblance of a season whether it's you know 8 10 12 14 games they're going to do everything they can. And I understand why. There's lots of money at stake here.

You know, there's a feeling of normalcy at stake here. I think people are going to be, after basically being cooped up since March, people are going to be dying for football. You know, they want to see these games. And so I think the NFL is going to do everything they can, but it's not going to be anywhere close to normal. There are going to be issues where players test positive. We need to be ready for that.

There are going to be issues where star players test positive, and we need to be ready for that. What happens when Tom Brady tests positive? You know, Tom Brady in Tampa Bay is one of the biggest storylines of this year. You know, Charles McDonald was saying on Twitter, who writes for the New York Daily News, he was saying it on Twitter this weekend, he has a piece up today in the Daily News about how this year, more than any other year in recent history,

there are so many great storylines, which is another reason we want to see football this year. I want to see Justin Jefferson running over routes on outside boot play action. I'm dying for that. He was one of my favorite players in this draft. So we want to see the league, and if I was going to try, but it's certainly going to look a lot different than what we used to see. Hey, before we get back to the conversation, I want to remind you that sports are coming back, and so are your chances to bet on your favorite teams and events.

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BetOnline, your online wagering experts. If I were to take a guess, I would say that they start and they try to go forward and then they have to pull it back. Much like the economy in many states, even in Minnesota, I think we've handled it well,

but they started opening some things up and then they've had to pull it back a little bit or are considering pulling it back like making sure there aren't bars open and making face covers mandatory and all those types of measures after they you know sort of opened things up a little bit now pulling it back in and it's gone through my mind uh mark i feel like i've got a solution that i wonder why this hasn't come up in a lot of the sports yet. I wonder about finding face coverings that can stay cool in the heat when they're playing these early September

games and whether it would look like all the cold games, something you could put completely over your face and even wear around a facility and practice and everything, but have it not, you know, be way too hot to play football and have players just passing out from the heat. Feel free to take the idea, Roger Goodell. Other sports, I don't see them doing it, and I kind of don't know why. That seems to be the answer. I saw an article about how Japan has mostly stayed open this entire time because everyone is wearing a face covering.

So why can't we figure this out? Maybe that's just my frustration speaking, but we're so close to starting this thing, and it just doesn't seem like we're anywhere close to having really plausible solutions to make it happen. No, I think it's a great idea, Matt. And, you know, that's one of the things like, you know, leadership instead of the good example, right? Like if you've got Roger Goodell out there with his, like, brand-new face covering, you know that's one of the things like you know leadership instead of the good example right like if you've got Roger Goodell out there with this like brand new face covering you know that you can get for you know $14.99 and it has your favorite team on it or you know your favorite

player's name or whatever I'm sure people would buy that up I mean people are you know people want to do the right thing you know I'm I got the Winnie the Pooh mask look that I made for the meme. I'm holding it up for Matt. It's one of the elite football Twitter memes. It is. It is. The Pooh meme. It's a good one.

Winnie the Pooh, right. Not the emoji or anything like that. You know, there are ways to be expressive while doing it. And I'm sure, look, if you're in the NFL, like we were just talking about, you want to find ways to make money to recoup the losses that are coming your way, face coverage would be a good way to do that. And if you could do it in a way that promotes the value of protecting yourselves and others by wearing a mask, like you said, Matt, you know,

I've seen similar articles in countries like, you know, Japan and, you know, regions like Hong Kong and Taiwan that have really cut this down. Mask wearing was a huge critical component of that. I mean, Japan basically almost completely stayed open and eliminated because everybody bought in, wore masks, and it really sort of reduced the spread of this. If you get a bunch of NFL players shooting PSAs doing it, I thought it was great when Nick Saban came out and Alabama football released their video with Saban wearing a mask. Like, it does help. And if we all want to see – I've seen high school teams put out, look, if you want to see these face masks in the fall, wear these face masks now.

And there are images of them, the masks we're wearing, you know, when we go to the store and things like that. So, you know, I think there's a way to make money, promote the issue, you know, and help us get towards, you know, beating this thing back and getting football on the floor. And I also wonder, you know, if it becomes a regional thing where certain teams just have to flip their schedules to play on the road because it's not safe to travel into those locations. I don't know. It's a lot.

But I will say, Mark, this has been a cathartic experience to get it out because you're great at analyzing the game. We'll talk about quarterbacks again soon. But it was nice to just kind of get out the way that I've been feeling about football recently. And I'm glad that you wrote it for USA Today. I keep having these Homer Simpson moments. If you remember when he has the barbecue and Lisa pushes the pig down the hill and he keeps saying, it's still good, it's still good. That's me. Great to be with you, Matt. I know exactly what you're talking about, especially when you're seeing the Ivy League and all the Patriot League. Things are getting

chipped away. It's like we're chasing that pig down the river. It's just a little dirty right now. It's got a little mud on it, a little soggy. But we still think we could eat it. But Bart, that voice is in the back of my mind saying, no, no, you can't. You can't, Homer. You've got to let it go. At what age, by the way, do my Simpsons references become very old? Look, we've all lost all sorts of semblance of time.

I mean, and look, I live through a lot of Scrubs references, right? And that, I've been reminded that that show debuted like 2001, like that's almost 20 years old now. And so, yeah, I mean, it gets harder and harder, you know, it's like sort of the flip side of that Matthew McConaughey line, you know, you know, we get older and older and older, but our references just stay the same age in our minds, right? Well, not for everybody else around us, but we references just stay the same age in our minds, right? Well, not for everybody else around us.

But we do what we can. We use the ammo we have at our disposal, and Simpsons references are always good around me, my friend. Same thing with football. 90s football references. I get those tweets sometimes. Hey, you know, get out of the 90s. That's how it goes.

Follow him on Twitter, at Mark Schofield. Read him at USA Today. And thank you for listening, as As always to Purple Insider.