United States President Donald Trump held a conference call with commissioners of the 13 major U.S. sports leagues Saturday, saying he believes the 2020 NFL season should start on time.
He’s also hopeful spectators will be allowed back in stadiums and arenas in August and September, but who’s to say if that’s an accurate timeline, as we’re all at the mercy of the coronavirus outbreak.
For California’s governor, that feels like a long-shot.
“I’m not anticipating that happens in this state,” Governor Gavin Newsom said on MSNBC. “We’ve all seen the headlines over the last couple days in Asia where they were opening up certain businesses. Now they’re starting to roll back those openings because they’re starting to see some spread. There’s a boomerang.”
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Newsom’s biggest concern is setting a concrete date prematurely amid an unprecedented period of uncertainty. That’s why when people in the sports world have reached out to him with questions, he’s urged them to be careful and not jump the gun.
“One has to be very cautious here, one has to be careful not to overpromise,” Newsom said. “It’s interesting, I have a lot of friends that work in Major League Baseball and in the NFL. They’ve been asking me, in fact, a well known athlete just asked me, a football player, if he expects to come back. I said, ‘I would move very cautiously in that expectation.’ Look, I’m not here to second guess anybody, but I am here to say this. Our decision on that basis, at least here in the state of California, will be determined by the facts, will be determined by the health experts, will be determined by the capacity to meet this moment, bend the curve and have the appropriate community surveillance and testing to confidently determine whether or not that’s appropriate. And right now, I’m just focusing on the immediate, but that’s not something I anticipate happening in the next few months.”
The first coronavirus case in the state of California was reported on Jan. 25, and they’ve had 12,573 cases reported and 282 deaths, according to the New York Times.
