What Contingency Plans Is the NFL Looking At When It Comes To Starting The Season
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 The NFL is set to release its 2020 schedule later this week, though there is still much
00:05 up in the air as the world navigates the coronavirus pandemic.
00:09 Joining me now is MMQB senior writer Albert Breer.
00:12 Albert, obviously the league is hoping to be able to have a 17-week schedule with fans
00:17 in the stands, but what are some of the contingency plans the NFL is looking at?
00:21 Well, there's no question that when the schedule comes out, it's going to look like a normal
00:25 schedule until you really dive into it.
00:27 And when you dive into it, there are going to be a few things that you can look for.
00:30 I think the first thing that everybody was going to look for was whether or not the international
00:33 games are going to be in there.
00:34 We know those are now canceled, so that's obviously one consequence of the pandemic.
00:39 On top of that, I think there will be other things folded into the schedule.
00:42 There could be clusters of games where their weeks are made up completely of inter-conference
00:48 games that could be easily pulled out of the schedule if they've got to collapse the schedule
00:52 to 14 games or 12 games.
00:54 That would allow them to do it almost like baseball used to be when the American League
00:57 and the National League wouldn't play during the regular season.
01:01 The other thing that I think is going to be sort of interesting is seeing if the more
01:05 affected areas have home games backloaded in the schedule.
01:08 So do the Niners, the Rams, the Chargers, the Giants, the Jets, do teams like that where
01:15 their states are under stricter restrictions right now, do they have their schedules backloaded
01:20 where maybe in some of these places where teams share stadiums, you see in Week 15,
01:25 Week 16, say the Jets playing on a Thursday night and then the Giants playing on a Sunday,
01:30 or the Chargers playing on a Sunday and the Rams playing on a Monday night.
01:33 Those are some of the things that I think we can all look for in the schedule where
01:37 there will be at least adjustments made to accommodate regionally what's happening and
01:43 then also to accommodate potential changes to the length of the schedule.
01:48 And among some of these adjustments, some dates might get moved around and if there's
01:51 some sort of a delay to the season, how far could the league move the Super Bowl?
01:56 Well this is a really interesting one, Maddie, this part of it, because I just think when
02:01 you look at moving the Super Bowl, that's a big deal, right?
02:03 Like hotel rooms, convention space, all the different stuff that's needed to put on a
02:06 Super Bowl.
02:07 So I asked around about that this weekend and I actually didn't know this, but I was
02:12 able to find out that as part of a bid, every city that's trying to get a Super Bowl has
02:18 to actually clear contingency dates.
02:21 So not only does Tampa have that first weekend in February set aside for the Super Bowl,
02:26 they've also got other dates built into the calendar.
02:29 Now I don't think that they'd want to move it back past the beginning of the next league
02:34 year of the 2021 league year, which would be in the middle of March.
02:37 That would require negotiation with the union and obviously would start to affect the 2021
02:42 calendar.
02:43 But there are contingencies where they could move the season back.
02:46 And one thing that's really interesting about this is that we've all talked about the idea
02:49 that the season may start without fans.
02:53 Well, talked to a couple teams about this and based on the amount of revenue that they
02:56 could lose if there aren't fans in the stands and if they went the whole season without
03:00 fans in the stands, it could wind up costing teams about $100 million per club.
03:06 The answer I got from teams was they would rather start the season in October or November
03:11 with fans than September without it.
03:13 So that's one thing to watch where teams could prioritize the idea of having fans in the
03:17 stands over just starting the season on time.
03:21 A lot of ripple effects obviously with some of these changes.
03:24 Of course, the NFL is doing its best to stay on track and on calendar for the 2020 year
03:30 with the prioritization of safety.
03:32 Albert Breer, thanks so much for the insight.
03:34 All right.
03:35 Thanks, Madeline.
03:35 [BLANK_AUDIO]