Are you ready for some COVID-19 football? Strap on a mask, because you just can’t stop the NFL

Marcos Bretón
·4 min read

When face coverings emblazoned with officially licensed NFL logos began selling on NFL.com, it seemed like a moment of note in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Who knows the American consumer better than the NFL?

Who satiates our primal gluttony for excess with year-round all-you-can-eat platters of television, violence, consumerism, jingoism, gambling, alcohol, and a little eye candy?

Now the NFL is hawking pandemic wear for charity? Yes, the other sports leagues are doing it, too. Personally, I aim to be the first guy on my block with a Sacramento Kings face mask.

Sacramento Republic FC have a snappy 3-pack of face coverings you can pre-order today.

Opinion

But the NFL is different.

It’s more powerful. It’s above societal norms of safety, good taste and race. It also has the weakest of all player unions in American sports who traditionally put up far less resistance than player unions in baseball and the NBA.

And look, there is abundant evidence of brain damage among players that is disregarded every year by the players and NFL fans.

So when I caught myself checking out the San Francisco 49ers pandemic masks, it hit me: They’re playing. They have their game face on.

The NFL should be the last sport to come back to the field given how contagious and deadly COVID-19 is, but it wouldn’t be surprising if the NFL was the first back. Major League Baseball is talking about a return, but must first work out those details with the players’ union. MLB players are already pushing back against the proposal for a shortened season.

The NFL? It announced its season schedule May 7. The Los Angeles Rams just announced their new uniforms. The speculation isn’t about whether the league will play, but how and where it will play.

Professional sports teams are selling face masks emblazoned with their logos. The NFL and FOCO donate the proceeds of these licensed masks to the CDC Foundation, which supports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Professional sports teams are selling face masks emblazoned with their logos. The NFL and FOCO donate the proceeds of these licensed masks to the CDC Foundation, which supports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

You may scoff, given that it’s impossible to make a tackle from six feet away. It’s impossible to socially distance in a huddle.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert working for the U.S. government, has said as much:

“This is a respiratory virus, so it’s going to be spread by shedding (the) virus,” Fauci said, to NBCSports. “The problem with virus shedding is that if I have it in my nasopharynx, and it sheds and I wipe my hand against my nose – now it’s on my hand. You see, then I touch my chest or my thigh, then it’s on my chest or my thigh for at least a few hours...If people are in such close contact as football players are on every single play, then that’s the perfect setup for spreading. “

Fauci said the NFL could test every player, sideline those who are positive and keep those who can play in isolation while they are tested daily. NBA players and baseball players may balk at this. But the NFL will find a way and people will fall into line.

People always do with the NFL, no matter what.

The league has no place for Colin Kaepernick for taking a principled stand on police brutality and effectively blackballed him. Yet the league has a place for Justin Rohrwasser, a kicker from Marshall University, who was just drafted by the New England Patriots despite sporting a racist tattoo with a racist militia group with a racist past. No problem.

Scores of NFL players have died prematurely with brain damage from years of car-crash level damage done to their skulls and the NFL and its many sycophants play it all down obediently. And anyone who dissents is forced out of the party – even Bob Costas, the most significant sports broadcaster of the last quarter century.

The NFL jilted the City of Oakland twice when it refused to pay for a new stadium. No problem. An unholy marriage with Las Vegas was formed. Raider fans from Sacramento by the score will make that flight to Vegas as soon as they are able – happily.

Sex scandal involving Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, the premiere franchise in the league? The league goes on. Steroids soil the baseball world but barely make a ripple in the NFL. And on and on.

The NFL wins, even when it makes no sense, so why should it be different in a pandemic?

Now, I only have one question: Will this 49ers face mask actually keep the coronavirus away?