but all the tests in the world don't stop someone from getting infected.
whether there are fans around or not, somebody is going to have to bring food to these people, and take out their garbage, and wash their sweaty towels. there's no way you can completely isolate every single person involved with a sports team. especially not big teams like the NHL and NFL have.
what happens when someone tests positive in these quarantined sports teams? they've probably already passed it on to someone else in the locker room.
i don't think we have any sports back for good before a vaccine. i really hope i'm horribly wrong on this. i just don't see how it can be done now that it looks like one infection doesn't confer immunity.
I know everyone keeps pointing to the vaccine as the end all solution to this issue - but a vaccine could be months away, it could be decades away, or it could never happen. Obviously the hope is that a vaccine is developed soon - but it might not be, and there's a good chance that we're going to have to come out of this a as a society without a vaccine. A treatment is more important than the vaccine right now.
Anyways... different conversation I guess... Back to this one...
You can do all of the things you said and do them rather easily. All of these teams have equipment managers and chefs that handle this. They have training staff and medical doctors.
Now the argument is, of course, not all of these people will want to quarantine themselves without their families. True. That doesn't have to be an issue, though.
First - sticking with the NBA - not everyone needs to go. Not every person on the equipment team travels to road games as it is - so it would just be an extended road trip.
Second - teams will be able to pool resources. You're not going to need to send all of the individual broadcast teams, beat writers, PR folks, etc. You can cull the herd by a significant number there. There are plenty of single trainers and team chefs to cover for those who don't want to leave their families.
You also don't NEED to have a dozen coaches per team like teams have now - specifically for short term quarantines in one or two locations. Same goes for scouts, player personnel folks, and shit, GMs. They don't need to be there.
For the NBA you're now down to maybe 30 people per team x 3 teams. That's 900 people.
You'll need refs and people at the table. You'll need security. You'll need a skeleton tv crew - but you don't need actual announcers in building. The Olympics, smaller college sports, the WNBA? They've been doing remote broadcasting for years - where the play by play comes from a studio and isn't in person.
So we're talking 1,000 to 1,200 people.
The MGM Grand and Aria have around 14,000 combined rooms - and MGM has 7 other properties on The Strip. They own or operate three arenas on the strip.
Disney has 30,000 hotel rooms and have a multi purpose sports complex.
The only thing that's holding this up is testing.
The NFL? Sure - bigger problem. But as I said - of we're still locked up like this in the fall football is the least of our worries. There won't be an economy left.
