The New Orleans Saints will take on the Chicago Bears during Wild Card weekend. Saints head coach Sean Payton wants the league to quarantine 50,000 fans so they can have a chance to attend the game this weekend.
The one time Super Bowl champion head coach is obviously looking for every advantage possible to possibly propel his team to their first Super Bowl appearance since they won the championship in 2009.
Payton said to “bus them, they’ve tested every day, and you’ve got a COVID-free facility. I think that’s possible.”
This seems to be a massive underestimation of the effort it would take to quarantine and test that many people before sticking them in a closed dome. While it would still be a wildly unlikely thing to happen, it would be a bit more feasible (not really) if you were going to place them in an open air stadium. But the idea of placing that many people in an enclosed area while numbers and deaths due to the virus are sky rocketing seems like a liability for whoever would be held responsible for the task.
“I brought up the idea of testing 50,000 people and quarantining them in a hotel and having like the most safest Superdome known to man, scientifically,” Payton said, according to the New York Post.
The Saints and the Bears are slated to kick off on Sunday at 4:40 pm eastern time.
Historically the Saints boast one of the most advantageous home-field advantages with a normal capacity of just under 75,000 people packed into the Superdome. But with the capacity is expected to be capped at around 3,000 people, they will likely have to draw on another source of advantage when kick off comes.
