MLB’s COVID-19 nightmare foretells doom and gloom for football season

The MLB seems on the verge of a shutdown, which would prove a bubble-less season can’t succeed.

As the fall creeps ever closer, the NCAA and NFL are trying desperately to come up with a plan that will keep their seasons alive amid the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a bubble model isn’t feasible for the size of the football teams, and the only league that has attempted a non-bubble season so far is failing miserably.

The MLB kicked off it’s season less barely two weeks ago, and everything has already fallen apart. The Miami Marlins had a massive outbreak of the virus, which then resulted in their opponent, the Philadelphia Phillies, being benched for several games as well. The St. Louis Cardinals also recently reported several cases, and commissioner Rob Manfred is threatening to shut down the season if the positive tests continue to spike.

The simple reality is that without a strict bubble environment, leagues can’t control the behavior of players once they’re off the field. All it takes is one athlete being irresponsible one time to take out an entire team and possibly others as well. There are rumors that the outbreaks on both the Cardinals and the Marlins were caused by players breaking social distancing protocols.

Football also poses additional challenges as a high-contact sport. On the field, it is fairly easy for MLB players to stay at a safe distance or at least avoid being in each others’ faces. For football players, being in your opponents’ personal space is fundamental to the game. That doesn’t even consider the packed sidelines that result from massive football teams with second and third stringers at every position.

Baseball should have been one of the easiest seasons to pull off, and the virus still found its way into clubhouses almost immediately. Keeping hundreds of college kids safe while traveling around the country or ensuring that both NCAA and NFL athletes are constantly maintaining quarantine rules will be next to impossible. We all want football to happen, but it just doesn’t seem realistic at this point.