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- Mar 16, 2019
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Bills owner Kim Pegula talked to the Buffalo News about the next steps for the opening of the sports, and emphasized that it must be done slowly.
The videoconference took place before Roger Goodell’s memo discouraging league personnel from talking on their own about how the COIVD-19 outbreak and plans to deal with it, and during several points in the conversation, it seemed clear that Pegula was deferring to centralized messaging.
But she’s also realistic about the complications of bringing players from around the country together for anything resembling a training camp or a season.
“We can figure out a way to get our players back in the building and be safe by doing it slowly and with guidance from the league, the CDC and government officials,” Pegula said. “And then internally, it’s taking it slow, so that there’s no setbacks. . . . I think that’s the only way that we can really get us back, over time, into having a game and having fans.
“And if we can get a vaccine. I wish I had those skills. I don’t. But this country has been able to do so many amazing things. I can’t imagine that we can’t figure out, from a medical standpoint, a vaccine. But there’s a lot of things we can do in the meantime. We’re just going to do it slowly, and we’re just going to do it with a lot of guidance.”
Pegula acknowledged this process won’t be a simple one.
Asked about a potential date for starting training camp, she replied: “I’m asking the same questions. The league obviously wants to have a season, for sure. And I think they are, like everybody else, trying to stay flexible and not put limits, at least right now, on things like timing and the seasons starting, because we all may have to work differently. We may all have to do things in the short term, make some exceptions, whether it’s virtual workouts like we’re doing now. No one wants to quite put a timeline on it because we all want to be flexible, because we all want to have a season in some shape or form. And I think that’s the priority.”
Asked about the possibility of playing games without fans, she referred to the “competitive equality” aspect, meaning there’s a real advantage of some teams have home fans and some perhaps not being able to because of local restrictions.
“It’s safe to say that’s one of the options that we certainly are looking at,” she said. “And if that’s the way we have to go, we’ll be ready.”
When asked simply if she anticipated the season starting on time, she hedged.
“Anything could happen. I don’t know. It changes every day,” she said. “Right now, I’m being optimistic. The schedule coming out, that’s a great thing. I think it gives us something that we can at least work on going forward, even though we have to do other scenarios around it. But it gives us a path forward, which I think is really, really good. And I can’t speculate. I really can’t, but if the league is confident and wanting to put this schedule out, then I’m going to go with that.”
That message of hope and optimism is certainly what the league is pushing, though Pegula is smart to acknowledge that there are so many factors which will determine the future that are far beyond the control of the NFL.