Roger Goodell Failing to Lead Against Coronavirus

Why does the NFL still not have a league-wide fan policy for the 2020 season?

Any good will Roger Goodell built with fans from his performance in the NFL's first virtual draft is officially gone. The 2020 regular season hasn't begun yet, but there are signs he's already failing to lead against the coronavirus.

This week, Goodell acknowledged that teams could face a competitive disadvantage this season because of COVID-19, but he's refusing to admit that one of those disadvantages will be some franchises having fans at home games and others not.

"There will be potential competitive inequities that will be required this season because of the virus and because of the circumstances that we wouldn't do in other years," he told NBC's Peter King. "That's going to be the reality of 2020. If we feel like we have an outbreak, that's going to be driven by medical decisions -- not competitive decisions."

The NFL has competitive and medical reasons not to allow fans in the stands this year. Because of state laws, some franchises cannot have fans for the entire season while from a medical perspective, it's just the safest thing to do in the COVID-19 era without a vaccine. But that won't stop the Cowboys from potentially filling their stadium half full in Week 2 against the Falcons.

But according to Goodell, fans don't make that big of a difference to the outcome of games.

"I would probably take issue with the fact that it's a huge competitive advantage (a home crowd)," Goodell said. "As you know, our stadium sizes are different across the league. The attendance is different on a normal season. We do not see and our clubs do not see a competitive advantage at all whether fans are in one stadium or another."

Maybe this will impact how many tickets the NFL will be able to sell once fans are welcomed back to every stadium. Apparently, we don't matter to Goodell; only our money does.

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