Editor's note: Truncated schedules. Expanded playoffs – or, in one fateful instance, no playoffs at all. Snubbed teams, hurt feelings, disenfranchised fans.
America’s Big Four pro sports leagues, in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic, are in various stages of trying to restart (or, in the case of the NFL, hoping to play uninterrupted) seasons.
Some of the creative ways the leagues are trying to resume play are quite novel, such as the NHL’s playoffs-only scenario. Some have echoes to past years, which gave us extra tiers of playoff action that ultimately led to permanent postseason expansion.
As we inch closer to seeing games again, let’s take a look back at what transpired in previous years when owners and players navigated their way to the finish line. (Or not.)
Today: National Football League
The NFL has endured shortened seasons before because of various reasons.
There was World War II, of course. The 11-game regular season in those days, however, was only cut by one game to 10 from 1943 to 1945 until the league went back to 11 games in 1946 and then expanded the season to 12 games, starting in 1947.
In the modern era, once the regular season was extended to a 16-game schedule in 1978, labor discord between owners and players resulted in a pair of shortened seasons as well. In 1982, a players’ strike condensed the season to just nine games. It happened again in 1987, when a strike reduced the regular season to 15 games.
No one can be completely certain what will become of the 2020 NFL season, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic certainly has put things in very serious potential jeopardy. League officials have kept saying they’re still planning on the season starting on time, with all 32 clubs playing in their own stadiums, but who really knows?
A reduced regular-season schedule isn’t just possible. So is the plausibility that the entire season could be wiped out.
Already, there has been speculation that the preseason will be cut in half because of rising spikes in positive tests for the coronavirus in multiple states, including Arizona. With health officials worried about a potential second wave of the pandemic coming in the fall, things could become much more dire.
One of the nation’s premier health experts on the matter, for instance, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is openly skeptical if football can even take place at all this year. One of the leading figures in the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci recently suggested the NFL would probably need a “bubble” to make a 2020 season happen.
“Unless players are essentially in a bubble, insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day, it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall,” Fauci told Dr. Sanjay Gupta during an appearance on CNN. “If there is a second wave, which is certainly possible, and which would be complicated by the predictable flu season, football may not happen this year.”
The NFL’s chief medical officer, Dr. Allen Sills, countered Fauci’s comments by telling reporters things “won’t feel normal because it won’t be normal.”
“Make no mistake, this is no easy task,” Sills said. “We will make adjustments as necessary to meet the public healthy environment as we prepare to play the 2020 season as scheduled with increased protocols and safety measures for all players, personnel and attendees. We will be flexible and adaptable in this environment to adjust to the virus as needed.”
Naturally, the league has its share of skeptics and many of them are NFL coaches and players themselves. Ravens coach John Harbaugh, for instance, has said it will be “humanly impossible” to comply with some of the guidelines and Rams coach Sean McVay said he doesn’t know how it will work, no matter the protocols and guidelines.
“We’re gonna social distance, but we play football?” McVay told Sports Business Daily. “It’s really hard for me to understand all this. I don’t get it. I really don’t.”
A handful of Cardinals players have said they will try to trust whatever safety measures the league plans to put in place, whether it’s daily testing for COVID-19 or social-distancing procedures starting when clubs can finally get together in training camp later this summer.
But for a professional sports league that was founded in 1920, two years after the Spanish flu infected 500 million people and may have claimed as many as 100 million lives worldwide, the NFL finds itself in a dangerous predicament. Does it move forward as planned and risk hundreds of potential positive tests from players, coaches, team personnel and others?
What if some of the game’s very best stars test positive and then are subject to a two-week self-quarantine? What will that do to the league’s competitive balance? What happens if one or two teams are infected by a mass spread of COVID-19? What would that do to the schedule? Just think about the ramifications, both immediate and long term.
Imagine how history will remember 2020 if deaths occur because the NFL proceeded with a season in the midst of a global pandemic. Whether it’s a player, a trainer or a broadcaster, the thought is frightening.
Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray, the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2019 and one of the betting favorites to win Most Valuable Player honors in 2020, acknowledged he’s unsure of exactly what to expect when it comes to staying safe and healthy this fall.
“I don’t know. It’s a weird situation,” he told reporters during a recent video conference call. “I think everybody is trying not to get sick or doesn’t want to get sick, so I don’t know. I can’t tell you. I don’t know how it’s going to go. I don’t know.”
Things were easier to disseminate during the NFL’s two work stoppages of 1982 and 1987.
The players went on strike three times prior to 1982, although that year would mark the first time in league history that games were lost because of a labor dispute. The season was reduced to nine games because of the strike, which started after Week 2 and was resolved in mid-November.
Much of the consternation came about because of the Super Bowl the previous season was such a huge TV ratings bonanza. It resulted in a huge new, five-year television contract for the league with CBS, NBA and ABC. The owners were getting richer and the Players Association wanted a part of it, demanding a 55-percent stake in revenue sharing.
Eventually, both sides solved their differences and the players received a five-year, $1.28 billion package with incentives in a new collective bargaining agreement. It was decided that eight teams from each conference would be eligible for the playoffs and would be seeded 1-8 based on their record-season records. Two teams, the Lions and Browns, made the postseason despite identical 4-5 losing records.
Washington would end up defeating Miami in Super Bowl XVII that season with quarterback Joe Theismann calling the Redskins “the greatest collection of misfits and retreads in football.” Fives years later, following another labor dispute that included replacement players and the 1987 season being reduced to 15 games, Washington found itself back in the Super Bowl again.
This time, though, things got much more contentious between the players and the owners, especially when the suits and ties decided to use replacement players or “scabs,” as the NFL players referred to them. It was an obvious ploy to break the strikes and it worked. But it came at a cost, straining relationships between teammates, especially after some of them crossed the picket line.
The Redskins, the only team not to have any players cross the picket line, went 11-4 and beat the Broncos 42-10 in Super Bowl XXII. Washington coach Joe Gibbs was 2 for 2 in Super Bowl appearances during each of those shortened seasons in the 1980s, but it was bad for the NFL overall as television ratings shrank and attendance figures plummeted, especially during the three-week trial of replacement football in ’87.
“I don’t think we’ll see it again,” former NFL player Cris Collinsworth, now an analyst for NBC’s Sunday Night Football, told The Republic during a 2017 interview. “It would just have to be ridiculous.”
If there is to be another shortened season, or the cancellation of an entire one, it won’t be because of a players’ strike or a lockout by the owners. Not for at least the next 10 years, that is. Back in March of this year, the league and the Players Association ratified a new collective bargaining agreement that will run through the 2030 season.
The big worry now is how the COVID-19 pandemic will impact the 2020 season and the health and safety of everyone involved. As of June 20, there were reports that as many as 10 NFL teams have had at least one of their players test position for the coronavirus.
Cardinals cornerback Patrick Peterson has Type 2 diabetes and has said he would be comfortable returning to work and playing again if the league and its teams follow all the proper protocols. That includes regular testing, daily temperature checks and the wearing of masks and gloves.
There’s no getting around the social-distancing problem, of course. It’s football, after all.
“I know the NFL is doing everything that they can,” Peterson said, “but it’s just so tough to put a finger on it or how to evolve around this virus.”
Have an opinion on the Arizona Cardinals? Reach McManaman at bob.mcmanaman@arizonarepublic.com and follow him on Twitter @azbobbymac. Listen to him live on Fox Sports 910-AM every Tuesday afternoon at 3:30 on Calling All Sports with Roc and Manuch and every Wednesday night from 7-9 on The Freaks with Kenny and Crash.
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