PITTSBURGH _ You've got a lot on your mind right now, no doubt, so I hope you were able to extract a quantum of solace this past week when the Los Angeles Rams unveiled their new uniforms.
Yeah, me neither.
While I generally like to see teams in all sports show up in their traditional garb, I really don't care which color combinations and accents the Rams will be rockin' this fall, much less what they'll be wearing. But the Great Rams Uniform Reveal was accidentally topical in the larger sense, because it was delayed until this year to coincide with the opening of their new stadium.
"Our focus was always (that) this is going to be an amazing, iconic, modern building," Rams chief operating officer Kevin Demoff told ESPN. "You want the uniforms to match the style and design of the building."
If you say so.
There is zero reason to doubt SoFi Stadium, which the Rams will share with the Chargers, will be amazing, iconic and modern, but Demoff might have omitted a key modifier in that sequence, specifically "empty."
Suddenly, it doesn't seem to matter much that SoFi Stadium will have a translucent ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (plastic) roof and an ovular video board of some 120 yards in length with its own name, cyclopean as it may be, "The Oculus". (If nothing else, that will mean Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones no longer owns America's largest TV.)
SoFi Stadium cost $5 billion, a frightful figure in the best of times, which, you've probably noticed, these ain't. What if, maybe you've wondered in some of your darker Hunker Games moments, places like SoFi Stadium and the new $1.8 billion Allegiant Stadium set to host the NFL's Las Vegas Raiders and worthy structures of similar purpose _ Heinz Field, PNC Park, PPG Pizzeria, along with America's grand theaters and concert halls _ what if they are all obsolete and we just don't know it yet?
Most sports executives realize that their beauteous, purposefully high-end facilities won't open to actual spectators again until there is a COVID-19 vaccine or some kind of treatment that diminishes a killer virus to a run-of-the-mill virus. They can't even think about obsolete stadia, but they also know that anyone who would try to ballpark an estimate on when they'll be safe again is not so much a frustrated spectator as a reckless speculator.
It's interesting that the league with the most time to figure this out, the most time to cheerlead on a vaccine, is the same league for which opening the sport makes the least sense _ the NFL.
In his interview with NBC's Peter King last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Pro Bowl immunologist, clarified a few things about how the virus is spread currently.
"If people are in such close contact as football players are on every single play, then that's the perfect set up for spreading," Fauci said. "I would think that if there is an infected football player on the field _ a middle linebacker, a tackle, whoever it is it _ as soon as they hit the next guy, the chances are that they will be shedding virus all over that person."
This somehow did not keep the good doctor from theorizing on the practical implications of a live crowd.
"If the virus is so low that even in the general community the risk is low, then I could see filling a third of the stadium or half the stadium so people could be 6 feet apart," he said. "I mean, that's something that is again feasible depending on the level of infection."
It might be feasible once the crowd is seated, 6 feet apart, but it is nowhere near feasible in the pregame hours.
You might not think there is any particular obstacle to utilizing only a third of Heinz Field's 68,400 seats because _ don't get ahead of me _ yeah, Pitt does it all the time.
But if those 22,800 people had to social distance in the line to get in, that line would stretch about for about 30 miles. The place has four gates for spectators, but that still means the line for Gate C, as I eyeball it here on my little Google map machine, would start somewhere west of Emsworth.
When you get to the gate, some teams are planning to take your temperature, which, by the way, will do nothing to prevent asymptomatic fans from entering.
As I mentioned, the NFL still has most of four months to figure this out, and it will need every last minute. Already, appointment entries are being discussed, plus the idea of getting concessions only at your seat after they're ordered on your phone, and plans on emptying the stadium need to be developed, as well as a universe of additional logistical challenges.
All of that is before you even think about the bathrooms.
Oh my god.
