Less than a week after President Donald Trump reportedly said he believed the NFL season would start on time despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf isn’t so sure.
Wolf, during his press conference on Wednesday afternoon, was asked if Trump’s timeline is realistic.
“I think it’s too early to call what happens in the fall,” Wolf said, via PennLive.com.
Trump said he believed the NFL would start on time on a conference call Saturday with commissioners of the country’s major sports leagues, according to ESPN. Trump also reportedly said he hoped to have fans back in stadiums by August and September.
Wolf is just the latest governor to express trepidation about the NFL’s starting on time in September — at least starting normally.
According to ProFootballTalk, the governors of Ohio, California and Illinois have also expressed some skepticism about a normal start to the NFL season.
NFL
California is home to four NFL teams, the most of any state in the country. And its governor doesn’t expect a “normal” start to the NFL season.
“I’m not anticipating that happening in this state,” Newsom said Saturday, via NBC Sports Bay Area. “We’ve all seen the headlines over the last couple days in Asia, where they opening up certain businesses, and now they’re starting to roll back those openings because they’re starting seeing some spread and there’s a boomerang. One has to be very cautious here, one has to be careful not to overpromise.
"It's interesting, I have a lot of friends that work in Major League Baseball and the NFL, they've been asking me -- in fact, a well-known athlete -- a football player -- just asked me if he expects to come back. I said, 'I would move very cautiously in that expectation.'"
In addition to the question about the NFL, Wolf was also asked about winter and spring high school sports. He said every winter sport — professional and amateur — has shut down and Pennsylvania needs to follow that.
"We need to stay safe,” Wolf said. “Again, our first priority is to keep people safe.”
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