The good news is the NFL is back for the 2020 season starting on Thursday night with the Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs facing the Houston Texans.
The bad news for NFL fans? One of their favorite things to tweet about will be paused for the year.
When NBC’s broadcast of Thursday’s season-opener begins, Cris Collinsworth will not slide into frame to join his broadcast partner Al Michaels.
The “Collinsworth slide” launched a thousand memes (and Collinsworth told us he had a good laugh over them). Twitter went nuts when he slid in from the left and not the right. And when there was no Collinsworth slide at all? Twitter LOST IT.
From Front Office Sports, the reason is obvious:
Michaels said the slide is out, at least for a while, due to social distancing guidelines.
“I was watching a baseball game the other night and the guy was trying to steal second and he goes to the ground and comes up six feet short,” Michaels said. “So maybe that will be our slide this year.”
ESPN also added this:
Because of coronavirus protocols that require him to maintain physical distance, Collinsworth won’t “slide” into the frame with his customary smirk. “The slide,” Michaels confirmed last week, “is on hold.”
On hold! That gives us hope that it’ll be back someday.
