As a sports fan, I have missed the enjoyment of following my favorite sports, teams, and players, as well as the entertainment that they provide through competition.  Although it was interesting to watch World Series games from the 1990s on FOX for a while, I was looking forward to the day when real sports that I actually care about (not golf) could start back up.  I have been watching to see how the professional leagues of my three favorite sports – basketball, baseball, and football – would handle the respective opening (or re-opening) of their seasons during the same approximate time frame.

With Major League Baseball’s recent coronavirus outbreak among the Miami Marlins only three days into their season, and with the St. Louis Cardinals now also experiencing positive tests, I’m concerned not only that MLB will have to shut down their season very soon, but that the National Football League (NFL) will not be able to play their season either.  While it might be too late for baseball, I’ve decided to focus on football for this post.  I would like to make the following proposal to the NFL, which, if they actually read and consider this, could save football this year.

Before I go any further, let me throw out a few caveats that are made necessary by our society’s passion for misinterpreting what they read.  First, I understand that everything can change two minutes after I post this and make any predictions or conclusions on here look ridiculous.  Of course, that’s probably what’s going to happen.  Next, I understand that the highest priority right now is that people stay safe, and that we do what we can to stop the spread of coronavirus.  Real life is of course more important than sports, and while I would ideally like to see sports happen, that desire should not be interpreted as that I want us to do so at all costs and risk people’s health and safety.  If shutting down sports until this virus is contained is what has to happen, so be it.  On the other hand, this understanding should not be interpreted as me rooting against sports to happen either.  My pessimism about the ability of the NFL and MLB to finish their seasons under the current environment should also not be interpreted as me rooting against them.  I want them to successfully carry out their respective seasons; I am merely concerned about their ability to do that.  Finally, I also understand the concern that some people are expressing about all the COVID-19 testing that is necessary for professional sports while we are still trying to make testing readily available for the general population.  And while I understand it, I’m not here to debate all that.  I’m afraid I won’t be able to solve all the world’s problems on this one post, so let’s just take this for what it is in its proper context – a specific plan to solve a specific problem.  Now that we have all that out of the way, this is my plan for the NFL to successfully launch a 2020 season.

1. Tell everyone to go home right now while we figure this out.  NFL training camps just started this week, so this first step might cause a lot of grumbling.  “We just got here, and now we have to go back home?”  Yes, sorry.  We’re just going to send everyone home for a few weeks, change the current plan, and bring everyone back at a later date.  Meanwhile, you can go back to having your team meetings over Zoom for a few more weeks.

2. Take the current 2020 NFL schedule and throw it in the trash.  We’re creating a brand-new schedule.  A delayed schedule with a shortened season which will give us some time to prepare and implement this plan.

3. Create a “bubble” plan like the NBA did.  The NFL has already decided against this, but really, it appears that they need to do this in order to successfully pull off a season.  More on this below.

Currently, the National Basketball Association (NBA) is implementing its plan to resume its 2019-2020 season that was suspended in March due to the coronavirus outbreak.  The season, which is just now resuming this weekend, features only the teams that actually had a shot at making the playoffs when play was stopped.  The plan is to finish the regular season in the next two weeks and hopefully play the entire playoffs, which should be completed in October.  Oh, and they are doing this all in a “bubble” environment in Orlando, where everything is contained in one location at a Disney World resort.  No unauthorized people are allowed in, and if anyone leaves, once they return, they have to quarantine.  So far, the participants have been in the bubble environment for three weeks preparing for the re-started season with no new COVID-19 cases.  So, either this plan is working quite well, or the NBA has just been lucky so far.

MLB and the NFL, on the other hand, are playing games at teams’ stadiums, traveling back and forth, without a contained NBA-type bubble environment.  With the recent MLB coronavirus outbreak so early into their season, evidence suggests that these leagues should have gone to a bubble plan like the NBA did.  I’m admittedly not an expert and can’t say for sure that there’s a correlation there, but that’s at least how it appears.  This is another reason why the NFL should probably delay the start of the season, so that we can have more information in a few weeks from how the NBA and MLB seasons are progressing.  But based on what we’re seeing right now, we’re going with the bubble plan for the NFL.

4. Figure out host sites.  Due to the much larger number of NFL players and others involved compared to the NBA, it’s probably not realistic to find one location for the NFL to play in.  This is probably the exact reason the NFL rejected such a plan.  However, we find four host cities, each one equipped to host one-fourth of the NFL, with all 32 teams playing its season at one of the four sites (eight teams per site), without fans.  Sorry, fans.

We will need to figure out where these four locations will be.  First, I would suggest that all football games this season be played either in indoor stadiums or at least in warm weather.  There’s no point in playing December games in Buffalo in front of no fans.  We’re already battling a global pandemic; no need to add cold weather to the mix either.

At whichever four cities are chosen, ideally, each of these cities would have at least two football stadiums that are set up to televise games (such as the host city’s NFL stadium and a college stadium).  Each city then plays host to four games each weekend, playing two games each on both Saturday and Sunday.  For example, suppose we select Dallas as a site to host eight NFL teams, with games being played at AT&T Stadium (home of the Dallas Cowboys) and at the Cotton Bowl (a college football stadium).  I realize that the games themselves could be played at any middle school football field, but we have to select stadiums that are actually equipped for a live national broadcast.  These eight teams then make up the four games in Dallas each weekend – two games on Saturday and two games on Sunday, with one game per day at each of the two sites.  Anyway, that’s just an example, as long as we can find four such cities that are available to host with this kind of setup.  I’m not going to suggest the four specific cities; I’ll leave that for someone else to figure out.  Again, just no cold weather games.

5. Assign teams to each site.  Here’s how to determine who gets assigned where.  The NFL consists of 32 teams; two conference of 16 teams each.  Each 16-team conference consists of four 4-team divisions.  8 teams get assigned to each site.  So, let’s use my favorite team, the Indianapolis Colts, as an example.  The Colts play in the AFC South with Houston, Tennessee, and Jacksonville.  We assign all four of these teams to one site.  Based on how the rotating NFL schedule works, all four of these teams are scheduled to play all four of the teams from the AFC North division – Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.  So, those four teams also get assigned to that site as well, for our eight teams.  Each of these teams will play all their regular season games against the AFC North or AFC South.  At a second site, we will have all the AFC East and AFC West teams.  At a third site, we will have all the NFC North and NFC South teams.  Finally, at a fourth site, we will have all the NFC East and NFC West teams.  Each of these pairings fits according to what the rotating schedule is supposed to be this year anyway.

6. Figure out a new regular season schedule.  This will not feature a full 16-game schedule.  Instead, while we hammer all these details out, we need to delay the season several weeks and come up with a 10-game regular season schedule for each team.  No, it’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing.  It would actually be longer than the 9-game strike-shortened 1982 NFL season.  Also, the longer the season is, the more difficult may be to expect players to live in a bubble environment, so if we’re going to do this, we probably need to shorten the season anyway.

Here’s how the 10-game season will work.  Each team plays each of its three division opponents twice, for a total of six games.  Also, they will play each of the four teams in the other division at their host site once, which account for other four games.  These 10 games would have already been on every team’s schedule anyway.  We are just eliminating the other six games, including all four interconference games that are typically on the schedule.

If we continue to take the Colts as an example, this means they would still have two games each against fellow AFC South opponents Houston, Tennessee, and Jacksonville.  Their other four games would be against AFC North opponents Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.  All 10 of these games are already on their schedule.  The six scheduled games that would be eliminated include the games against NFC North opponents Chicago, Green Bay, Minnesota, and Detroit.  Their games against the AFC East’s New York Jets and the AFC West’s Las Vegas Raiders get the axe as well.

Also, we can give the teams one bye week like normal, in case it’s needed, but if someone says they don’t need a bye week because we’re shortening the season to 10 games, I won’t really argue against that either.  But I’m inclined to give each team a bye week, which gives us an 11-week regular season.

7. Figure out a playoff schedule.  This is supposed to be the year the NFL playoffs expand from 12 to 14 teams.  I think that’s expanding it a little too much, but since we’re making everything weird this season anyway, let’s make a one-time exception to expand this year’s playoffs to 16 teams.  Essentially, we would take the top four teams at each site – the two division winners and two wild cards – and they get to stay and compete in its own four-team mini-playoff for the right to go to this year’s “Final Four”, as we will call it.

At this point, this is where it might get tricky, but hopefully not.  Once we are down to four teams (one winner from each host site), there will be travel necessary for at least three of these teams so they can all be at the same location to finish the season.  We’ll give the final four teams a much-deserved bye week here, due to the re-location necessary.  Since they’re going straight from one bubble environment to another one, hopefully there won’t be a two-week quarantine needed here.  Admittedly, I’m not sure how that works.  Let’s say they don’t have to quarantine and that we can give them just one bye week.  If they do have to quarantine, this plan will need to be adjusted to extend the end of the season accordingly.  We now have two AFC teams and two NFC teams remaining, so we can have the AFC Championship and the NFC Championship as normal.  Traditionally, there is then another bye week before the Super Bowl, but in this case, we would go ahead and play the Super Bowl the following week.

There’s my plan.  Since I’m not a celebrity and since I have never played organized football outside of intramural games in college, I doubt that anyone from the NFL is ever going to see this or read this or take it into consideration, but there it is.  With this plan in place, here’s what a revised schedule will look like:

• Today:  Players go home and wait for further instructions while the specific details of this plan get worked out and finalized.
• Mid-September:  Training camp starts back up.
• October 5:  Teams travel to their assigned host site and quarantine for two weeks.
• October 19:  Practice starts for opening week.
• October 24-25:  Week 1 of the NFL season.
• January 2-3:  Week 11 – NFL regular season ends (same weekend as currently scheduled to end).
• January 9-10 and 16-17:  First two rounds of playoffs (same weekends as currently scheduled).
• January 31:  AFC/NFC championship games.
• February 7:  Super Bowl (same day as currently scheduled).

Now, I’m guessing that this plan has gone into way more detail than most of my audience cares about (those of you who care about sports at all).  I realize that this plan probably won’t actually do anything, as I have no direct contact with anyone associated with the NFL.  Maybe it’s too late to change things.  Maybe things will be relatively okay the way they are.  Maybe my skepticism is way off base, and the NFL will move forward with their current plans and still be able to have a complete season this year.  But the way things are currently looking, I have to say I’m skeptical that we will have an NFL season be able to finish the year without some sort of contained environment.  And selfishly, I would like there to be a completed NFL season this year so that we can also have a completed fantasy football season, because I have a fantasy football league to win.  And who knows, maybe the Colts win the Super Bowl this year.  Hey, it could happen.  So, if someone could show this to Roger Goodell so that we can save football, that would be great.

Now somebody figure out a plan to save Major League Baseball.