Plans for league meetings, draft “remain in place” for now

Posted by Josh Alper on March 10, 2020, 7:47 AM EDT
Getty Images

The ongoing spread of COVID-19 in the United States has led to the cancellation of events like the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas and the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California in recent days, but the NFL has not altered its plans for two upcoming events at this point.

The first of those events is the league meetings scheduled for March 29 – April 1 in Palm Beach Florida and the second is the draft in Las Vegas from April 23-25. League spokesman Brian McCarthy said, via Adam Schefter of ESPN, that plans for both of those events to go forward “remain in place” for now.

He added that those plans could change based on the advice they are getting from the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NFL-NFLPA’s medical experts at the Duke Infection Control Outreach Network.

“We will continue to monitor and share guidance as the situation warrants and as our experts recommend,” McCarthy said.

The NFL has postponed the annual Consumer Products Summit that was scheduled for Tampa this week.

Permalink 12 Comments Feed for comments Back to top

12 responses to “Plans for league meetings, draft “remain in place” for now”

  1. Cancelling all these events is social media driven insanity. We had the Hong Kong flu, Bird flu, Legionaires disease and others nobody ever cancelled events or didn’t go about their lives.

    People in the at risk groups of elderly with health conditions and people who had small children were more careful in what they did and everyone washed their hands and took basic health protections. The world did not grind to a halt because of them.

  3. Shutting down the draft would be a horror story to Vegas. Vegas is crowds everywhere. If people are worried about attending an open air event on the street, how should we feel about the casinos, shows – or better yet – those jam packed nightclubs?

  5. Why not just make the whole thing into a CGI event? You wouldn’t have to worry about what town is hosting it or who will be visiting. You could still have the live shots of the athlete with his twenty siblings and mother just like always. And to replace the Commish, you could have Wyle E. Coyote and the Road Runner providing comic relief. Wyle E. could hold up a sign that announces the draft pick number and as the Road Runner holds up the draft pick name, a boulder falls on the Commish, played by Wyle E.

  6. The Pac-12 basketball tournament is in Vegas this week, so that could be indicative of how things go.

    The success level of March Madness as a whole could dictate which direction all of these public events go.

  7. If only Trump had been more pro-active in dealing with the virus. Instead, he has been firing all the scientists, gone golfing and blamed Democrats. Our leader at work.

  11. I think the government is liable to dictate next steps, rendering the NFL’s draft plans as moot. A general moratorium on large gatherings is likely in our collective future at some point in the next 30-45 days.

  12. The overreaction to this is a lot more concerning than the actual illness.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to leave a comment. Not a member? Register now!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.