Could the NFL's biggest game of the year, Super Bowl LV, be impacted by COVID-19?
The first hurdle for the league is to get the season underway to begin with, which is uncertain at the moment. Under the assumption the season does get off the ground and is able to battle through the season with COVID-19 still circulating the country, the Super Bowl will be played as planned.
During an NFL Players Association call on Friday, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Phillip Rivers asked about what would happen if a player tested positive prior to the Super Bowl. The answer he got is both unsurprising and alarming for the highest rated-event yearly television event and major sports spectacle. According to Pro Football Talk:
“The answer Rivers got is that there would be no exceptions, even for the Super Bowl, even if the player is asymptomatic. The rules say that any player who tests positive would have to be isolated for at least five days, and then could only return if he tested negative twice, and those two tests were administered at least 24 hours apart.”
This answer would mean that anyone who tested positive the week of the big game would be ineligible. This leads to multiple nightmare scenarios which could ruin the Super Bowl, such as both starting quarterbacks tested positive or what happens if one of the two teams had an outbreak within its roster.
These are the questions that the NFL have to consider amid the chances they are taking during the pandemic. The league continues to take into consideration whether if the risk really is worth the reward in forging ahead. It's possible that the league would have to put contingency plans and caveats in TV and advertising contracts on the chance that the Super Bowl needs to either be postponed, cancelled, or it isn't nearly as profitable due to a star player being out.
Would fans accept a Super Bowl where a star player is forced out of action? While the risk is ever-present in the NFL of a star player getting injured, as they are normally a part of the game, a severe, globally-reaching illness is another thing altogether.
There are far more questions than answers involved with the beginning of the 2020 NFL season as well as its end, at the Super Bowl, as Rivers has since learned.
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