As the NFL rockets toward the 2020 season without plans for a bubble approach, one owner has wondered aloud whether that ultimately may become necessary.
“You can keep players from the fans, but you can’t keep players from the players,” Raiders owner Mark Davis said in the Las Vegas Review-Journal article that focuses primarily on his complaints regarding the decision to cover the first eight rows of seats with tarps. “That could be our Achilles’ heel. Without some form of bubble, we may be asking for trouble.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested earlier this month that the NFL may need a bubble, until he didn’t. It’s definitely not something that would be easy to throw together on the fly, as a Plan B or C or F.
We mentioned the possibility in the early days of the pandemic, but the bubble concept quickly becomes incredibly complicated and expensive -- and far from impenetrable. With 65 players per team and coaching staffs and trainers and doctors and all other critical personnel, the bubble will be big. The bigger the bubble, the easier it will be to bust. If only a couple of young players decide to sneak out to a nearby nightclub and catch the virus while doing so, the foundation could be in place for an outbreak.
The ideal bubble concept would entail taking everyone to a remote location, but that would be even more complicated and expensive, with facilities and living arrangements for thousands constructed from scratch. It’s the kind of project that, if it was going to happen, needed to start months ago.
So, basically, if the NFL finds itself clamoring for a bubble, the more prudent approach may be to pull the plug.