Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast. My name is Freddie Gray. I'm the deputy editor of the

spectator and the editor of its US edition. We thought that 2020 was going to be all about the

presidential election, but now it will forever be the year of the pandemic.

So instead, Americano is going to look at how COVID-19 is transforming the United States and its politics.

There's a lot to talk about, perhaps even more so than before. So please keep tuning in.

I'm joined today by Charles Wolford, who is a sports journalist at the Times, the London Times, not the New York Times. And we're going to be asking, how is the NFL handling the pandemic? Now, Charles, before I start, we should put out warning with two Brits talking about American sports. And I know we have quite few American listeners, and it can be very annoying for Americans to hear Brits talk about sports. But you actually

know what you're talking about. I don't really, although I'm an enthusiast. But I do think

it's interesting how different American sports have approached the pandemic. And perhaps we

could compare it to the way football or soccer has handled it in

Britain and elsewhere. But first of all, let's talk about your piece which you've done for us,

which is about the NFL and about how they're coming back. The season will start in September,

September the 10th. As it stands, as I touch upon, the fact is, so much could go wrong

between now and then. In ways it's very hard to anticipate, but they are pushing ahead to get going on schedule on September 10.

So it's the NFL, the league, took this decision that they were going to ask players whether they were willing to rule themselves out.

And they had to say at the beginning of the season, before the season starts, I'm going to rule myself out. I don't want to play because I'm not willing to

accept the risk. And 67 players said they were not willing to play. They didn't want to

play because of coronavirus. And was that more or less than people were expecting?

I don't know what sort of would they would have regarded as in their heads,

what, you know, the number that might cause them some kind of panic.

I think there were issues, obviously, with all these things,

there were discussions between players associations,

or the players' union and the league.

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