There's a reason America continually leads the world in innovation. We're allowed to have bad ideas. In fact, we're encouraged. Questioning power, asserting our own will, and standing up for what we believe in are all core parts of our ethos, and they create a culture of conception.
That's part of what should give us hope that we'll get out of this COVID-19 thing sooner than later. We've had scientists - just trying to help - share models that showed doomsday scenarios asserting we'd all be dead by now. The federal government sent hundreds of thousands of the wrong types of masks to Illinois recently. We probably didn't mobilize fast enough. Yet, we've tested more people than any country in the world, we have a private sector racing to innovate all forms of COVID-19 therapies and we even have some places that seem to have "flattened the curve."
Throughout this entire pandemic, we've had open, honest discussions about the positives, negatives, and everything in between. People are cynical about "the media," but they usually don't realize how lucky we are in America to have an abundance of alternate voices on any number of platforms. Podcasting, Reddit, Twitter and other message boards all host valuable conversations for those who've decided the mainstream is not their cup of tea. The beautiful thing about this country is that free speech still exists, and it leads to a rapid formation of ideas, through relatively unadulterated discourse.
We'll take your dumb ideas, talk about them, and make them better.
That's why I welcome what Mike Florio and Jay Williams have said in the past few days about getting the NFL and NBA back up and running.
Mike Florio suggested this:
You may think his idea is far-fetched, and there are certainly parts of it that may be too financially or practically straining on the NFL, but I can promise you this: The NFL will do anything in its power to televise a 256-game regular season schedule this year. It makes about $1 billion each from Fox, CBS and NBC. It also has $1.5 and $2 billion deals with DirecTV and ESPN. Those networks want to maintain a good relationship with the league, but won't be nice enough to pay the NFL for less than what was promised in contract negotiation. With the league already presumably losing ticket sales and some merchandising sales, it will be looking to scrape together as much achievable revenue as it can. Perhaps the league will decide that building its own facilities somewhere will be worth it based on the cost-benefit analysis of playing out a 16-game season without COVID-19 concerns.
Perhaps the league can build in LA, where the Summer Olympics are scheduled to be held in 2028. If the NFL can parlay those facilities into rent money from the Olympic committee, they may be able to reconcile some of the lost funds.
Jay Williams suggested cruise ships:
Now, I've read that cruise ships are quasi petri dishes for COVID-19 to be spread, so that form of isolation may be misguided, but I'm glad Jay is bringing a sense of urgency to this topic. There has to be a way to get all of the players in one COVID-19-free location and finish the season, or post-season at least. Maybe Las Vegas, where the league has a level of comfortability with UNLV because they play Summer League there. Maybe the Bahamas. There should be a number of college venues available across the US, because many are calling it quits on the spring semester, and telling students to stay home.
Whatever the case, these are very preliminary ideas, and I love people that are willing to be criticized in order to move a necessary conversation forward. There will be fools whose only capacity for response is to criticize, but as Dana White said last week in reference to his defiant consummation of UFC 249, "I don't give a f*ck."