New York’s announcement Sunday clears another hurdle for sports’ return

If you want another sign that we’re probably going to have football starting when it was supposed to, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gave the green light for New York teams to open facilities.

“Starting today, all the New York professional sports leagues will be able to begin training camps,” Cuomo said during a news conference Sunday.”

It’s not the first indicator — but a pretty big one — that we’re going to have sports sooner rather than later. New York was one of the harder-hit states in the Covid-19 crisis, but hospitalizations and deaths have been trending downward.

Last week was a flurry of positive signs sports was coming back.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson issued the state guidelines that include being able to use a ball in summer workouts. Then the NCAA followed by leaving it up to the teams but as far as they were concerned teams could come back June 1.

The Southeastern Conference said schools could have players back on campus for the so-called “voluntary” workouts starting June 8.

Fans will have to wait a little bit longer to find out if they are going to be allowed in the stadiums to see the games, although Arkansas athletics director Hunter Yurachek has said he’s planning to have a full house for the opening football game against Nevada on Sept. 5.

Based on the situation today, that seems like a fantasy. Not playing the games, but having a full stadium.

Who knows what things will look like in 90 days, considering how far it’s progressed the last 60 days when all sports had been cancelled and a lot of the nation suddenly out of work.

As the testing increases the positive results go up (some of which are false positives), but the hospitalizations and deaths continues to decrease.

The other part is positive results are increasingly coming from people who stayed inside, not those outside while the hospitalizations and deaths are primarily elderly and people with prior existing conditions of some type.

Covid-19 is probably not going away unless it just disappears somewhat along the lines of the SARS virus a few years ago. As the temperatures increase it’s going to be interesting to see what happens with the numbers.

Reports of a vaccine are now targeting the fall at some point, which could be as high as 60 percent effective (if it’s equivalent to the most successful viral respiratory vaccine ever created).

Treatments are becoming better as doctors learn more about it and get a handle on treating the virus. It will continue to improve.

As always, people should listen to their doctor and if they they might be at risk for getting sick, make your decision based on that. It’s an individual decision.

But there is likely going to be football starting on time.

“It’s a return to normalcy,” Cuomo said Sunday. “So we are working and encouraging all sports teams to start their training camps as soon as possible. And we’ll work with them to make sure that can happen.”

If New York is doing it you can rest assured states with lower numbers are going to do whatever they can to get sports back.

Even in Arkansas.