By: Chandler Hubert
No fans, remote commentating, and no leaving the facility. Baseball was the first to toy with this idea of a “bubble” in the Arizona Plan. A few weeks back, the MLB was considering keeping teams at their spring training facilities in Arizona and Florida to start the regular season. This would involve creating two new leagues, and only playing teams at your spring training facility. Since the Arizona Plan, there have been other ideas to continue baseball as soon as possible.
The latest idea also involves re-dividing the divisions, but into three leagues: East, West, and Central, rather than the traditional American League and National League format. The teams would be divided into divisions geographically to reduce travel. Unlike the Arizona Plan, this would allow teams to play at their home ballpark, however still without their homefield crowd.
NBA’s latest plans also involve this “bubble theory”, however their plans take the bubble much more literally. NBA is contemplating having all teams report to Disney World in Orlando, Florida and carry out the remainder of the season at the theme park. Teams and players would not be allowed to leave the facility, they would be quarantined together in Disney. Similar to the MLB’s plans, fans would have to watch the games remotely and would not be able to cheer on their favorite teams in person.
The NBA Commissioner Adam Silver stated before any of this can begin there must be widespread testing for COVID-19. In addition, medical personnel needs to be available to treat players’ injuries suffered during games and practice.
The NBA and MLB agree, before baseball and basketball can resume, players will need to go through another training camp to get back into game shape. Still, a lot of planning needs to be done, but with this idea of quarantining teams it appears more likely sports will resume this summer.