S1E19 / A Return to Sports, a Return to “Normal” Life? / Peter King, Rohan Nadkarni, Grant Wahl

I'm Dr. Celine Gounder.

And I'm Ron Klain.

And this is Epidemic. Today is Tuesday, May 12th.

On March 9th, a basketball player for the Utah Jazz named Rudy Gobert gave a press conference not overthink, you know, play basketball, but just being able to attack with efficiency.

He got the standard questions, but one question was about the rising concern about the coronavirus.

You know, there's not much we can do right now. We're not gonna stop touching, stop saying hi to each other, or stop, you know, giving each other high fives, but it's just being aware of it and, you know, try to Have some hygiene, a little more hygiene, especially with the hands. Just be aware of it.

At the end of the press conference, you can see Rudy stretching his 7-foot frame as he gets up from a chair that looks too small for him. He gets ready to leave and then he stops. He bends over and he touches all the microphones on the table in front of him. There's some laughter from the press. And Rudy jogs out of the room.

Two nights later, on March 11th, I was on the set at MSNBC doing an interview with Rachel Maddow when news came that while Rudy and his team were set to play the Oklahoma City Thunder with the crowd already in their seats, a stunning development.

And fans, due to unforeseen circumstances, the game tonight has been postponed. You are all safe. And take your time and leave the arena tonight and do so in an orderly fashion. Thank you for coming out tonight.

The reason Rudy Gobert had tested positive for COVID. The game was postponed, and then the NBA took an unprecedented step.

Breaking news here on CBS Sports HQ, and it is monster news. The NBA has suspended the season after Rudy Gobert has tested positive for coronavirus. Now, that's video from Monday At a press conference, I can't stress this enough.

Rudy Gobert testing positive was the best thing that happened for the NBA and arguably in many ways the best thing that happened for this country.

This is Rohan Nadkarni. He covers basketball for Sports Illustrated.

I don't think people were taking this seriously, Celine, until they found out an entity like the NBA could suspend its season because of the coronavirus.

Why did it take a sports league instead of the government, the White House, the CDC, to make people take this seriously?

I mean, to be frank, I think it's because the White House wasn't taking it seriously. I mean, you had Donald Trump saying, oh, it's going to go away in a couple weeks, it's not a big deal. And I think the NBA, why it really grabbed people's attention, because it's unprecedented. It happened, it happened so quickly. I mean, it happened within hours of someone testing positive. I think it was a combination of The shock factor, the idea that something so normal is being snatched away from us in an instant, uh, I think that's really what grabbed people. Rudy Gobert testing positive was an inflection point, not only for the league, but I truly believe our society at large. And without a doubt in my mind, I think it saved countless lives.

In this episode, we'll look at the pandemic through the lens of basketball, soccer, and football to see how COVID is changing the way that sports are played. We'll look at what the game might look like for fans and players when it resumes, how COVID is affecting the business of sports, and what are the consequences of trying to play sports in the middle of the pandemic. As we recorded this episode, the NBA had just announced it would start to reopen some of its practice facilities, but only where state guidelines said it was okay. And even if the NBA does start to play games again, there's no telling when, people will be allowed in to see the games in person?

You know, I was at the first Lakers home game, uh, after Kobe Bryant's death earlier this year, and there was an emotion in that building that night, and that was— that was an emotion forged through sports. And, and that happens a lot. I do think something would be lost if there aren't fans in the stands, but does that mean I think the league should rush to put people In the seats, not at all. I just can't imagine it being safe for 20,000 people to cram themselves into one building to watch a sporting event.

You know, if you had to imagine what a live sporting event might eventually look like post-COVID, what do you think that will look like?

That's really interesting. I do think there's going to be kind of like a transition period where players are playing in small gyms or small arenas with no fans. Post-COVID, I do wonder if. We might see something like temperature checks. We might see something like handwashing stations or hand sanitizing stations all around the arena. People making your food being forced to wear masks, different kind of consequences like that. I think those are the kinds of things that might stay. So personally, I'm very skeptical of the NBA coming back this season. I definitely don't think there's going to be fans at any sporting events.

Do you think the players would lose something without fans to cheer them on?

Without a doubt. There's a reason why if Anthony Davis has a huge slam dunk, maybe the first thing he does is he gestures towards the crowd and asks them to make some noise. That energy that's in that building, it's palpable. If you haven't been to a sporting event lately, you might not I think it's true, but there's an exchange that happens. Both sides are feeding off of each other. It's tangible when you're in the building and something is happening, something big is happening. I think players would miss it a lot if fans are not at their games.

In Germany, they actually have a term for these games. They call them Geisterspiel, ghost games.

This is Grant Wahl.

Grant Wahl is America's leading soccer journalist. He spent 24 years at Sports Illustrated covering college basketball and soccer. He's the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Beckham Experiment, as well as Masters of Modern Soccer.

And full disclosure, Grant is my husband.

So Grant, how do you think playing games without fans affects the players, affects the game, affects what soccer is?

It's crazy, man. I went to an empty stadium game once in Italy. Where there had been some hooligan incident, and so they didn't allow fans in for the game. And it's, it's a completely different experience inside the stadium and for anyone who's watching on TV, because you can literally hear the players talking to each other. You can hear every foot striking the ball. You can experience it in a completely different way.

Grant says fans may be more important to the game of soccer than other sports., which has some soccer clubs looking for ways to recreate the live stadium experience.

So what you're seeing is you're actually having suggestions of crowd noise being piped in to the stadium or on the broadcast itself, potentially seeing sort of fake fans in the stands, whether that's CGI or whether that's actual cardboard cutouts of people. And, you know, just talking to players, they say it's very different as well.

I want to ask you about what's been called Game Zero, the Champions League game played in Milan, where it's believed that this disease was spread quite widely. What role do you think soccer plays in how we think about the spread of coronavirus in Europe?

Well, you mentioned this Game Zero, which has gotten a lot of attention. It was this Champions League game, between the Italian team Atalanta, which is based in northern Italy in Bergamo, and Valencia from Spain. This was an outdoor stadium atmosphere, so this wasn't like an indoor setting, and yet there was a lot of transmission of the virus that took place in that stadium. And experts believe that this game where you had a full stadium in Milan was a huge reason why coronavirus became such a hotspot in northern Italy.

But soccer could have some important lessons for the US when it comes to eventually restarting professional sports. Countries like Germany are planning to start playing again this weekend.

It's no coincidence that the countries that have done the best in their response to the coronavirus are now able to seriously embark upon restarting sports. And so you have Korean baseball starting again, and it's on TV here in the US. US, and you have the German Bundesliga being the first major European soccer league to start up again. Now they're gonna play in empty stadiums, and everyone sort of understands that empty stadiums are going to be part of global soccer, maybe even beyond this calendar year. But at least Germany is in a position where they have dealt with coronavirus far better than the United States has, for example.

So soccer starts in Germany in a few days, but once it starts, what happens when a player tests positive? What procedures have at least the Germans put in place for either the team or the opposing team or whatever's going to happen when, as is inevitably the case, someone who plays in one of these games winds up testing positive?

Yeah, I mean, they put them into quarantine and this is a procedure they've been very publicly cognizant of getting out there. Like, we know we're going to have some positives, and those players are going to go into quarantine, and any players they've been around are going to go into quarantine. So there is a concern that, like, you may not have enough players.

I mean, in soccer, there is no social distancing. If you're one of the 11 on that field, you are brushing up against every one of the other 11 out there, except perhaps maybe the goalie. And so if someone on the field tests positive, that means literally the other 10 players on your side and the 11 players on the other side, they're all going to get quarantined?

And that's the question, right? Because like when the NBA decided to suspend its season back in March, that was when they realized, oh, Rudy Gobert from the Utah Jazz tested positive. This is going to be a real issue now, you know, having players getting the virus. And so I do think that's going to be Something to watch in Germany is, are they going to be able to keep playing games? Are they going to be able to have enough bodies out there? Because they're going to continue testing players, and they are going to quarantine players in hotels, I think away from their families too. And so that becomes a real concern.

Here in the U.S., Major League Soccer suspended its season just after the NBA, but they're starting to train again. Well, at least as much as they can with social distancing.

You know, I spent a lot of time talking to different MLS teams during this stretch, and what they've told me is you can only have so many Zoom meetings with your players and send them so many self-workouts. Like, you need to become a team again even before you can think about playing actual games. They basically need to go through another preseason.

So let's say soccer does restart safely this summer. All these scenarios assume no fans in the stadium. No fans in stadiums presents different problems for MLS than other leagues.

MLS still relies far more on ticket sales as part of its income than it does on television rights. Television rights actually provide most— the vast majority of the income for most big sports leagues. That's not the case for MLS. And so for them, playing in empty stadiums would be an even bigger hit than it would be for other leagues where you at least have so much in terms of television rights. So I think that's going to have an impact on how MLS approaches when they start playing games again. They're still talking about wanting to play the whole 34-game regular season, and we're starting to run out of time for MLS to be able to do that. But it's more important to them to be able to play in front of fans just in terms of the bottom line.

The last sport we're going to look at is the other football, American football, the National Football League. While other leagues like the NBA and soccer leagues have seen their seasons interrupted by COVID, the NFL hasn't been impacted yet.

Their season doesn't start until fall. This season is supposed to start exactly 4 months from right now on September 10th.

Peter King covers football for NBC Sports.

That first game is supposed to be hosted by the Kansas City Chiefs.

Of course, football isn't just a game, it's an entire happening, and tailgating is a big part of that. Peter says that a typical scene at Arrowhead Stadium where the Chiefs play, well, it's an all-day event.

If you show up at 8:15 in the morning, you can drive through the parking lots outside of Arrowhead Stadium And you will see 30,000 people at that moment out grilling, out drinking beer, out having one of the great days of any of their years.

That's what you would expect to see, but this year with coronavirus and the pandemic, we'll have to see what happens.

If the game is played on September 10th, and if there are no fans in the stands, We're gonna see a very, very, very weird event. And I've asked a bunch of players about it in the last 2 or 3 weeks. What would it be— what would it be like if you didn't play with fans in a game? I'm hoping for the best. We all are.

But in the immortal words of the commissioner of the National Football League, Roger Goodell, "Hope is not a strategy." Peter says that the NFL is thinking through many different scenarios, but so far, they're moving forward as if it was going to be a normal season.

Well, maybe. Do you think it was a good decision for the NFL to move forward with the draft?

I do. It basically showed many sectors of the United States that, hey, look, you know, the general manager of the New York Jets, Joe Douglas, he's trying to make a pick and he's got his 3 kids climbing all over him. And You know, what person who's got 3 kids and is working out of his house or her house these days doesn't have 3 kids crawling all over him or her during the course of the day? And I think it was almost a charming thing for the NFL to do. It was kind of lovable, honestly. And I don't think I have ever used the word lovable with the NFL.

Besides holding a virtual draft, Peter says that teams in the NFL have taken some unprecedented steps to try to minimize the risk of infection when the games are played.

The Texans hired a team hygiene coordinator. Okay, so what does that mean? It means that this person is coming into the Houston Texans facility and NRG Stadium their home field. And that person is going to be responsible for directing the cleanliness and sanitation of every one of the team facilities 24 hours a day. It's, it's quite honestly a tremendous responsibility. So in other words, that person is responsible to make sure that no one gets COVID-19. And so that's, that's a tough job, but I think more and more teams are going to follow that lead.

And Peter mentioned something else that hasn't been discussed with these other sports. Football, like the others, may see an upcoming season that's different, but football seems willing to also let that season be unfair, and that might be the only way there's football played this year.

Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, said basically that It has to be exactly the same rules for every team, for all 32 teams. If one team cannot be in its facility, all 32 teams will not be in their facilities. So I think Roger Goodell really earned a lot of style points, quite honestly, in that he basically said, we're going to be egalitarian for all. But I think more people around the league right now are thinking that Roger Goodell has to drop that, and he has to basically convince the owners in this league that this is going to be an uneven year. It just is. There's nothing anybody can do about it. Maybe some teams in states that are not ready to fully open like that are not going to be able to play all their normal games at home. And maybe some teams will be able to have fans and some teams won't. And I don't mean to be flippant about this— got to take a chill pill about the rules this year because I think the rules are going to be very weird. They're going to be different. And for some teams, they're going to get every break, and for other teams, it's going to be bad. But I think most people feel like The benefit will be actually having the NFL have a season rather than not have a season at all, if it has to be exactly the same for everyone.

Beyond these health concerns, there are also labor considerations that influence how leagues like the NBA and the NFL handle COVID.

Here's Rohan Nadkarni again. The NBA, the labor is just much more empowered than it is in the NFL.. And I, I think that changes the response a lot. I think whatever happens in the NBA is going to be done with a lot more input from the players. You know, NBA skews a little more younger, a little more diverse, that to be perfectly frank, I could see, uh, you know, NBA fans maybe being a little bit more careful, uh, in their response than NFL fans. I, I can only speak from anecdotal personal experiences, but the NBA is a little bit more purple as opposed to the NFL, which can skew a little bit more red, I think. So the dynamics of the leagues in terms of their labor are very different. And then also the people who consume those leagues, I think that will kind of change the response to how they proceed.

And Peter King says that football in particular is going to be under public pressure, maybe even political pressure, to play their season.

My biggest fear about the opening of the NFL season, whenever it does happen, is that there will be some external pressure on the opening of the NFL season, and the external pressure could come from the White House. And again, I don't think that the NFL would ever do anything where they're consciously doing something that is against best practices of any kind. But I do think that Donald Trump and, you know, the White House, they want to see America get back to work and they want to see the NFL play.

Is there something special about the NFL in particular in that respect, something symbolic maybe about a return to business as usual?

The National Football League is simply different. And you might say, well, why is that? And I would say, well, because in an average year, one-third of the living, breathing human beings in the United States will watch the Super Bowl on television. And that more than doubles any other sports event, any other television show. In the United States. And I think everybody in the NFL understands and believes that they're very, very important to the, to the rebound of this country.

More from Rohan Nakarni. I don't think President Trump obviously cares for some of the politics of players like LeBron James or Stephen Curry who've, who've called him out in the past. I will say, unfortunately, it is to Donald Trump's benefit that the sooner things return to quote-unquote normal for Donald Trump, I mean, the better for his reelection chances. This is obviously not my area of expertise as a sportswriter, but I think it's fairly obvious that for Trump, if the NBA restarted tomorrow, and in people's minds, if they somehow draw the slightest connection between that sense of normalcy and the president, that's good for him.

We know that COVID has become a new front in the culture wars. Polarization drives how conservatives conservatives and progressives, Democrats and Republicans view public health guidelines. Remember when Rohan said that when the NBA suspended its season on that night, March 11th, it put COVID on the radar for a lot of Americans for the very first time. The NFL might have a chance to make its own impact this fall.

I honestly think this is an opportunity for the NFL because the NFL is so incredibly popular. And it's an opportunity for the NFL, basically, to pave the way for the rest of America.

Peter says that NFL teams can help normalize things like face masks and hygiene, social distancing, in a way that government sources haven't so far.

I mean, this is almost overly dramatic, but when you watch the news every night, and when you see how many people in the United States 30, 40% of the people in the United States don't care about this issue. And I'm not saying football stars and football heroes have to point the way, but quite honestly, I'm hoping this year that there are a lot of symbolic things that are done.

Epidemic is brought to you by Just Human Productions. We're funded in part by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and listeners like you. We're powered and distributed by Simplecast. Today's episode was produced by Zack Dyer and me. Our music is by The Blue Dot Sessions. Our interns are Sonia Baradwa, Annabel Chen, Isabel Ricci, Claire Halverson, and Julie Levy. If you enjoy the show, please tell a friend about it today. And if you haven't already done so, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people find out about the show. You can learn more about this podcast, how to engage with us on social media, and how to support the podcast at epidemic.fm. That's epidemic.fm. Just Human Productions is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, so your donations to support our podcasts are tax deductible. Go to epidemic.fm to make a donation. We release Epidemic twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. But producing a podcast costs money. We've got to pay Zac. So please make a donation to help us keep this going. And check out our sister podcast, American Diagnosis. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at americandiagnosis.fm. On American Diagnosis, we cover some of the biggest public health challenges affecting the nation today. In Season 1, we covered youth and mental health. In Season 2, the opioid overdose crisis. And in Season 3, gun violence in America.

I'm Dr. Celine Gounder.

And I'm Ron Klain. Thanks for listening to Epidemic.