Sports Time Radio

While the National Football League will have it’s own set of circumstances to deal with as they try to open their season it does seem that they’ll be able to play that season continuously unlike Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association had to. Of course the NFL will have to figure out a couple of things.

First and foremost testing and player safety will be the most difficult thing to keep up with. The one thing that keeps popping up right now is the number of pre-season games teams will play. The NFL owners want to cut the number of pre-season games to 2 while the National Football League Players Association doesn’t want to play any pre-season games.

When it comes to sports it seems as when it comes to negotiating it’s either that specific league itself or it’s a players union that’s try to take advantage of the situation and get something out of this deal. That’s all this seems to be here. The NFL players union wants something in return for a certain number of pre-season games. In the end they’ll work this out somehow and will probably end up settling on just 1 pre-season game being played.

Now NFL teams don’t take pre-season all that seriously anymore and as for most teams the starters barely play if at all. As odd as it may sound I think it might be important to have the NFL play a couple of pre-season games.

Most importantly playing these pre-season games would give teams an idea of how they’re going to handle the current situation and it may give them an opportunity to see what a game would be like without fans and then what steps they might have to take if a limited number of fans are allowed to return to games later in the regular season.

Then from a pure fans point of view without some type of pre-season game or games being played how many weeks will it take for an NFL team to get up to speed and start playing decent football. It’s not like the starters would be playing ever minute of these two pre-season games, but no matter how much they played it would help improve the games when they get into the regular season. Last season the Chicago Bears hardly played their starters during the pre-season and they suffered for it at the start of the regular season. Everyone is waiting with anticipation for football to arrive, but the last thing any fan wants to see is bad football to start the season.

This of course leads us to the question of; what does the NFL players association want? While I’d like to think that it’s just players safety and how the NFL will handle testing for the Corona virus I know better than that. Unfortunately the NFL players association hasn’t mentioned anything; so we’re going to have to wait and see and just hope that this doesn’t up the season.

The NFL did released the process they’re going to try and follow if and when the season get started. Here’s what the NFL will be trying to do. The league will mandate that team buses cannot be more than 50% full and that there must be at least one open seat between passengers on team planes. Also everyone will get his or her own hotel room on the road and that all players and team personnel must wear face coverings while on the road. Players also are being told that they will not be allowed to leave their hotel rooms to eat in or otherwise use restaurants that are open to the public. Now players will be allowed to use contactless food delivery services and they’ll also be able to use rom service. Everyone has to travel on the team plane and/or bus. While at the hotel, players and team personnel may not be visited in their rooms by anyone who’s not in their traveling party, and no one in the traveling party may use shared hotel facilities such as pools or gyms unless they have been disinfected and are being used only by the traveling party.

The NFL release these guidelines on Friday, but it’s unclear if the NFL players association has agreed to these or if the two sides will have to sit down and come to an agreement on these. I’d like to think that since the NFL released these that they’ve worked this out with the NFL players association.

It doesn’t seem like the NFL is asking too much of it’s players while they’re on the road, but as we have seen with the NBA and it’s “bubble” set up; players are use to a certain lifestyle so there may be some push back, but hopefully the players will see this is for their own health and safety and follow the these guidelines.

NFL training camps will be opening very soon and the NFL will be welcome backed by sports fans with open arms. The NFL has always been the most popular of the big four sports here in America. Now the fans have to hope that there’s no interruption of the regular season or playoffs if they get that far. It would be a big plus even if the games had to be played with out fans to see a league be able to play their entire schedule without a stoppage due to the Corona virus.

We’re just a little under two months away from the start of the NFL regular season. Thursday night September 10th the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs are scheduled to host the Houston Texans in the first NFL game this coming season.

Now we have baseball starting in five days. Then will have the hockey and Basketball starting at the end of the month. What I’d like to know is; are you looking forward t the start of one of those three season or are you holding out for the start of the NFL season?

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