The Loop
Boomer Esiason has a fascinating theory about all these Clemson players catching COVID-19
It’s June 30th, 2020. The PGA Tour, NASCAR, and a host of European soccer leagues are all back, with MLS soon to follow, but it’s been a veritable ice age since America has had a “Big Four” sport to obsess over. ESPN is getting shellacked, with the 100th straight day of LeBron vs. MJ no longer enough to prop up ratings. Fox just punted on their US Open broadcast rights mid-deal. Sports sites everywhere, including this one, are scraping the wood off the bottom of the barrel just to stay afloat. There is a crisis of not having enough to say or enough to say it about, which goes a long way in explaining what you’re about to see next. This is WFAN’s Boomer Esiason on Monday.
Wait for it . . .
Well there you have it, folks. We are officially in the end game now. According to Boomer, SEC programs and other proud southern football institutions like Clemson may herding immunity by infecting themselves now so they can’t catch COVID-19 come September. Is this a case of desperately scrapping for clicks—of saying something straight to the camera and winking like some old timey silent movie star knowing full well that BackAftaThis will get you a couple million impressions by the morning? Very possibly yes!
Or—and this is a BIG or—is Boomer on to something here? Would you really put it past the blue blood college football program to put the needs of their team ahead of the needs of their species? That question is rhetorical.
The glaring hole in this theory, of course, is that there may be no immunity from COVID-19, previous infection or no. Even the CDC’s FAQ page responds to that question with an emphatic shrug emoji. But still, it's an interesting hypothesis from Boomer, who may or may not have just given Bill Belichick one hell of an idea. Don’t take off those masks just yet, New England.