Raiders vs Browns: Cleveland Center/NFLPA Prez JC Tretter With Wise Words About COVID-19; Halftime Las Vegas 6 Cleveland 3
(Publisher’s Note: The Las Vegas Raiders are playing the Cleveland Browns, which include center JC Tretter — president of the NFL Players Association. With COVID-19 playing havoc with the NFL and its schedule and the Raiders coping with COVID-19 issues, Tretter’s words back in late August 10 days before the 2020 season started carry as much meaning now as they did then.)
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
The president of the NFL Players association delivered some good news about the novel coronavirus as the NFL season sits a mere 10 days away. The Cleveland Browns’ JC Tretter by way of Cornell University in Ithaca, NY wrote a column for the union’s website and mentioned that from Aug. 12-20 when 58,397 COVID-19 tests were conducted no players tested positive, while six personnel members tested positive.
He stressed some key points:
— “We must remain vigilant to avoid getting lax with protocol enforcement. We have seen other sports experience setbacks and outbreaks, in part because they stopped prioritizing the safety measures put into place. Our collective efforts cannot stop until we complete a full season.”
— Expect the NFLPA to push for the continuation of daily testing. “We will continue to rely on scientific data to inform our approach for combatting this virus. As the science evolves, we will evolve with it.”
— Mitigation is huge. “We will beat this virus by eliminating its ability to transmit to other people. Every time we can limit our potential exposures, we take an incremental step toward creating a safer environment . . . . we must all recognize that every interaction with a person outside of the football team poses a risk to getting to game day.”
— Personal responsibility is paramount. “The responsibility now lies on the shoulders of every player, coach, staff member, executive and owner. The pandemic has created a situation where the actions of a single person can affect the health and livelihood of thousands. In a time when the impact of each individual’s actions extend beyond themselves, following (or exceeding) protocols and CDC guidelines is not just for the benefit of you and your family, but for your teammates, your coaches, the teams’ staff, their families and the community at large.”
— Small inconvenient trade-offs required told hold a football season. Tretter called this, “Small sacrifices for the greater good.” He was to the point: “There should be no debate: wearing masks and social distancing are effective tools in stopping the spread of COVID-19. The healthier everyone in the NFL community stays, the higher the likelihood a full season can take place.”
— Economics and safety. “So far, we’ve learned that economics and safety don’t need to be mutually exclusive. If you prioritize the safety of all involved, then you can bring people back together.”
— And finally, let’s come together and treat the virus as a common foe. “If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that we wish our reality today looked a bit different. The sooner we stop fighting each other and instead frame the virus as our common enemy, the closer we’ll get to the sense of normalcy that we all miss.”
Here is Tretter’s complete essay.
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