Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country's top public health expert, said in a recent interview with The New York Times that sports may be tough to resume play this year.

Several leagues have attempted potential scenarios to either start or return to their regularly-scheduled seasons, but all of them have their share of complications. The NBA recently declared it would open up practice facilities for players in groups of four, working out separately with a trainer and only after taking delicate safety measures.

Major League Baseball hoped to start up sometime in May by congregating all players in various stadiums in Arizona, though that plan has shown very few legs to this moment.

The NFL has yet to put forward a clear plan of attack, but all parties are hopeful to have football around in 2020. For Dr. Fauci, safety must take precedent above all:

“Safety, for the players and for the fans, trumps everything,” said Anthony Fauci. “If you can’t guarantee safety, then unfortunately you’re going to have to bite the bullet and say, ‘We may have to go without this sport for this season.’”

The United States recently reached 1 million confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus — a dangerous thought for those hoping to have professional sports at all costs.

“What we need to do is get it, as a country and as individual locations, under control,” said Fauci. “That sometimes takes longer than you would like, and if we let our desire to prematurely get back to normal, we can only get ourselves right back in the same hole we were in a few weeks ago.

“We’ve got to make sure that when we try to get back to normal, including being able to play baseball in the summer and football in the fall and basketball in the winter, that when we do come back to some form of normality, we do it gradually and carefully. And when cases do start to rebound — which they will, no doubt — that we have the capability of identifying, isolating and contact tracing.”

Sports will have to take a seat on the bench for a few months and possibly the rest of the year. While that will be a massive economic sacrifice, it's a much better alternative than risking the spread of this pandemic among the athletes and even the fans.