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NFL Debating Team Bubbles To Carry Out The Playoff Season 

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Throughout the unpredictable 2020 NFL season the league has maintained an “all options on the table” mentality in terms of how they will continue out the rest of the season safely as the world continues to battle the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Chief medical adviser Allen Sills recently spoke at a media conference, claiming that the league never seriously considered a bubble approach for the regular season, however, the playoffs are a different story, and after seeing how successful the NBA was at playing out the rest of their season in a bubble with no Covid-19 cases appearing, the option is looking more and more attractive. 

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The NFL is set to hold its Week 8 conference later this month where bubble concepts, and other options for how to carry out the playoff season, will be discussed more seriously. Despite a few outbreaks of Covid-19 in the beginning of the pandemic the NFL otherwise hasn’t needed to implement any aggressive measures in terms of game play due to the fact that they’ve been very diligent in securing team facilities and safe travel arrangements with strict protocols for all parties involved in the regular season. These protocols involve daily testing, contact tracing, and other standard practices we’ve seen working within the past eight months. 

The latest league-wide testing results showed that there were eight new positive tests among the 2,459 players, and 11 new positive cases among the 5,340 coaches and other staffers tested. These sort of spikes are why the bubble approach to the playoff season is being discussed more now as the road to the Superbowl gets closer and closer. 

The NBA, WNBA, NHL, and now MLB have all instituted the use of bubbles to carry out their seasons and all leagues have shown massively successful results with this approach, hence the NFL’s peaked curiosity. Saints coach Sean Payton was one of the first individuals working in the league to bring up a bubble approach months ago, and he has only further pushed for this as the pandemic has progressed. 

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“Teams are going to demand that they get bubbles of their own, and it won’t be a ‘soft’ quarantine. It’ll be a hard bubble. Man, nobody’s going to miss the Super Bowl because of COVID.”

Pre-pandemic it wasn’t unheard of for teams to isolate themselves at hotels before home games, so the idea of a playoff bubble would just be a more intensified extension of that plan. The main concern is moving from local bubbles in the beginning portion of the season to larger ones that will need to exist to accommodate for the playoffs. Sills recently discussed with the press why the bubble strategy hasn’t been considered more seriously in the past. 

“The bubble doesn’t take away the need for all of our other mitigation strategies. In fact, infection can spread more rapidly inside a bubble if it does get introduced, because everyone is together in very close quarters.”

Sills continued on that one of the only things the NFL has learned from other experiences this season is that non-player staff and personnel also need to have their own accommodations and bubbles to remove all elements of risk. The NFL Players Association will likely be voting on what the next steps for the season will be later this month. Experts are predicting that it will mainly come down to the “cost vs. risk” argument, however, time is running out for the NFL if they want any chance at finishing up their season on schedule.

Baseball Stadium

MLB Plans To Show Support For ‘Black Lives Matter’ Throughout 2020 Season

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Major League Baseball made it’s return this week and it’s putting one of the biggest social justice movements in US history at the forefront of its condensed season. MLB players will be putting the Black Lives Matter movement at center stage as they play for crowdless arenas in the coming weeks. 

Due to Covid-19 concerns, MLB has spent the past few months trying to plan the most effective way to continue with the 2020 season while keeping all employees and players safe. After weeks of deliberation the sporting league was able to finalize plans for the season that’s starting this week. 

The Black Lives Matter “BLM” logo is now accompanying the MLB one on the pitcher’s mound. This Thursday fans at home watched the Washington Nationals Play the Los Angeles Dodgers with the logo freshly painted on the mound for all to see. The Tampa Bay Rays tweeted on Thursday in solidarity with the movement, specifically in relation to the murder of Breonna Taylor. 

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Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants kneel prior to the national anthem before their game at Dodger Stadium on July 23, 2020

“Today is Opening Day, which means it’s a great day to arrest the killers of Breonna Taylor,” the Rays tweeted.

The Boston Red Sox retweeted the message to their 2.1 million followers, prompting a massive wave of support and sharing online from fans. The Nationals, New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants are just a few of the teams that have pledged to wear ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘United For Change’ patches on their baseball uniforms, which will also feature a new MLB logo that depicts the player as black. 

This will be the first time a new logo such as this will be used on the field, and players couldn’t be more thrilled. The Nationals and Yankee’s even took their uniforms one step further and just wore T-shirts that said “Black Lives Matter” on them during Thursday’s pre-game. During Thursday’s national anthem, all players and coaches kneeled while holding a long black ribbon in unity with one another. The official MLB twitter account posted the photo in solidarity with the movement, causing fans to call on all other major sports leagues to “step it up” in terms of their support for Black Lives Matter. 

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“Today, and every day, we come together as brothers. As equals with the same goal – to level the playing field. To change injustices. Equality is not just a word it’s our right!”

The logos and tweets of support are just small parts of a new policy from MLB. The policy calls on the MLB players, the Players Alliance, and all other staff working within the MLB to enhance initiatives to improve Black representation in baseball both on and off-the-field. The league will also be expanding charitable donations to black owned/run organizations as well as continuing to give black players more of a platform during games. 

The policy also allows players to write messages on their cleats and uniforms in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement; sporting uniforms in general are very sacred and often not written on in general. While baseball is known as one of the first sports to integrate black and white players on the field, they also are aware of the vast history of racism within MLB, and are working to reckon it everyday.