"The clubs put their financial interests above the common good"

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Cam Newton, quarterback for the New England Patriots, is one of the NFL pros with Covid-19

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Fred Kfoury III / Icon Sportswire / imago images / Icon SMI

Stephon Gilmore knows a lot about defense.

He has been playing the cornerback position in the American National Football League (NFL) for eight years.

He won the title with the New England Patriots last year and the league named him the season's best defender. 

Gilmore, 30, has known since the middle of this week that it is easier to fight off opponents than to keep the coronavirus at bay.

On Wednesday he tweeted: "I kept to every protocol, but it got me anyway. Please take it seriously."

It is a realization that the league leaders have so far only partially reached.

Above all, NFL boss Roger Goodell, who until recently believed that the most popular sport in the USA would be spared the worst with a bit of mask requirement, distance rules and regular corona tests.

But the opposite is indicated.

Professionals and employees have contracted the virus in at least five NFL clubs, two dozen in the Tennessee Titans alone.

Playmaker Cam Newton and defender Bill Murray are also infected on Gilmore's team,

the training area was closed on Sunday, apparently because there is another corona case in the squad.

He doesn't know what's coming, tweeted Gilmore, but he is in good spirits because he "trusts in God".

Meanwhile, the league is relying on changes to the game plan, hoping to be able to sort out affected players in time and put them in quarantine.

Three games have already been postponed, including Sunday's encounters between the Titans and the Buffalo Bills and the Denver Broncos and the Patriots. 

The result is scheduling conflicts and further postponements.

The NFL threatens a season of chaos, in the worst case an early end.

Too big for the bubble

The causes of the sudden virus outbreak are sometimes homemade.

In contrast to the National Basketball League or the MLS soccer league, the NFL does not have games that are isolated from the outside world, in which all players, coaches and supervisors live in specially reserved hotels and play games centrally in an arena.

The NFL, with its 32 teams, a good 8,000 players and employees, apparently found such a mammoth project too costly.

The players' union also resisted because they did not want to expect the parties involved to be separated from family and partners for months.

Instead, the NFL teams travel across the country - a fact that is sometimes bizarre.

The Patriots flew in two planes to the game in Kansas City earlier in the week after quarterback Newton was infected.

The actors who had contact with Newton sat in one, the rest of the team in the other. 

Epidemiologist Zachary Binney of Emory University in Atlanta has a hard time understanding processes like this.

"Why do you let players fly separately when they'll be on the pitch together later anyway?" 

So it happened that Stephon Gilmore, who later tested positive, chatted with Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes after the game against Kansas and gave him a high five.

Mahomes, he said later, did not sleep in the room with his pregnant wife as a precaution.

A season end could be imminent

According to Binney, the league would have to cancel the season if three to four corona cases occur in several teams at the same time.

"The NFL is in a very shaky state." 

The scientist suspects that the sudden increase in Covid 19 cases is primarily due to the negligence of individual athletes who did not take the corona protective measures too seriously. 

Professionals like Rodger Saffold from the Tennessee Titans, who, contrary to the regulations, met several teammates privately for weight training after the club closed the training center due to several corona cases.

And who justified his actions by saying that he had to provide for his "livelihood and the family".

Binney hopes that the NFL will understand the current infection rate as a "wake-up call".

"With the mass of infected people that there are now in our country, the safest thing would be if each team lived in their own training center and refrained from outside contact," he says.

The league reserves the right to take such a step so far.

One is in the process of "removing all loopholes" from the virus, says Allen Sills, chief medical officer in charge of the NFL.

"Of course we won't prevent new infections. But we can minimize the risk of infection." 

The fans return anyway

Surveillance cameras on the training grounds have recently been designed to ensure that every player, coach and employee is wearing a mask.

Failure to do so could result in heavy fines.

Some head coaches have already paid $ 100,000 for not covering their nose and mouth during the game.

Their clubs had to pull out a quarter of a million dollars.

As strictly as the league is with its employees, the clubs seem to be lax when it comes to the utilization of their stadiums.

The Pittsburgh Steelers want to let 5700 fans into their arena for their game against the Philadelphia Eagles this Sunday, the Miami Dolphins allow up to 13,000 spectators in the stands.

"The clubs put their financial interests above the general welfare of the population," says epidemiologist Binney.

"The money that the franchises make from ticket sales in no way justifies the high risk of infection."

Binney, who he says has been a huge football fan since childhood, finds this behavior so disturbing that he has not seen a game this season.

"And maybe," he says, "I'll never look at one again." 

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