NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills doesn’t sound ready to rule out coronavirus impacting the season.
Earlier in the week, NFL general counsel Jeff Pash said the “expectation” was for the season to continue as planned, but it wasn’t known for sure what would happen. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
Now, Sills is letting it be known that changes could be made because of the virus. “I don’t think that I would interpret those comments to say that that is absolutely what’s going to happen,” Sills told NFL.com about Pash’s comments.
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He further added, “We hope and pray for the best and prepare for the worst, realizing that is one potential outcome that we will be back fully in business playing games as normal in front of fans on schedule. But it’s certainly not the only outcome.”
Sills also pointed out that it’ll be hard for sports to start back up as long people have to still quarantine if they’ve been in contact with anybody testing positive.
So, to put it simply, Sills is making it pretty crystal clear that it’s an incredibly fluid situation right now, and absolutely nothing is guaranteed. It’s pretty much the same as college football hanging in limbo for the time being.
That should have been obvious to everybody paying attention, but it’s apparently not. I love Pash’s positivity, but Sills is a doctor for a reason. Doctors operate on facts. They don’t operate on blind faith and hope.
Now, don’t get me wrong here, I’m all in on the season going forward as planned if it’s possible, and I hope it is.
At the same time, I am slowly mentally preparing for that to not happen. I hope I’m wrong, but I expect some changes to be made because of coronavirus. Nobody would love to see the virus go away more than me, but there are simply too many unknowns right now.
Let’s all hope by the time September gets here that we’re talking about the games and not the virus.