Home > Article
VOL. 44 | NO. 31 | Friday, July 31, 2020
No fans in the stands would be ‘weird’ for Titans players
By Terry McCormick
Veteran long snapper Beau Brinkley and wife Kayla, an athletic trainer at Brentwood High.
-- Photo ProvidedIt might be too difficult and too fluid to outline all the ways that the proposed 2020 NFL season will work.
Many details are still being worked out, and the logistics of everything from practice sessions to media interviews seem to still be very much a work in progress amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
That said, Tennessee Titans players seem ready to endure whatever is necessary to play the game they love for a living.
“We know it’s going to be different,’’ Titan long snapper Beau Brinkley says. “I don’t think anybody was prepared for this spring when it first hit. I don’t think we knew the repercussions of what was going to happen, but I think everybody is gonna have a little bit of a ‘getting used to,’ period. We know it’s going to be different, but we’re excited to be able to play.’’
One thing that might be different – and apparently is still being decided – is whether or not fans will even be allowed in the stands at all. Major league baseball restarted last week with no fans, and the NHL and NBA are doing the same this week, even going so far as to quarantine their players in a bubble for the duration of their respective seasons.
The NFL thus far is leaving it up to the particular teams, and apparently their city and state governments, to say whether or not fans will be allowed in the stands at half or even a quarter capacity.
The Titans thus far have refunded single-game tickets and are giving their season ticket holders options to either plan to attend and social distance or opt out of attending games in 2020.
“If we don’t have fans, that’s going to be weird for a couple of weeks, but if it comes down to it, we’re just going to play this game we love and at the end of the day, we can say we performed and sit back and social distance,” Brinkley adds.
While Brinkley played his college football at Missouri and is used to big crowds in the stands, defensive tackle Isaiah Mack, who played at FCS Tennessee-Chattanooga, offers a different perspective on playing with fans possibly not in the stands this season.
“It might not be that weird. Coming from Chattanooga, you usually don’t have the largest crowds,” Mack says. “For me, it’s just going to be playing football. I think that’s going to be cool, because now you can just play football and not worry about the outside.
“You ain’t got to worry about people yelling at you or throwing beer at you. But I think it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be a challenge for some people, but we’ll just go through it like we have to and act like pros.”