Nothing recalibrates our priorities like a major crisis
The NFL has made its share of bad decisions over the years, but the league got it right on Wednesday when it postponed the Miami Dolphins’ home opener against Tampa Bay until Week 11.
With Hurricane Irma, one of the most powerful Atlantic storms ever recorded, bearing down on the Florida peninsula, the last thing anyone in south Florida needs to worry about is playing a football game, regardless of the location.
Everyone involved — the Dolphins players, coaches, executives and staff — should be focused on the game plan to ensure their families’ safety – not the game plan to beat the Bucs.
To think otherwise is simply misguided.
Unless you’ve experienced a major hurricane first-hand, you can’t understand or appreciate the scale of the event or the destruction.
South Texas had days to prepare for Harvey, knew exactly the potential devastation it could wreak and still was completely overwhelmed by the sheer force and magnitude of the storm. Despite the Herculean efforts of the first responders, Houston Texans and J. Watt, it will take the area years to recover.
“This is so much bigger than football, ” Watt said last week, while helping organize relief efforts in Houston.
In times of crisis, the NFL knows its place. While the league is often guilty of overt greed and unyielding oversaturation, it has long understood where it stands in American culture. The league has a strong history of putting its game in proper perspective when catastrophic events strike.
Former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue canceled the entire Week 2 schedule in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
The league quickly mobilized to support the Saints and the city of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and did its best to manage an impossible situation.
Just recently, the league canceled the Aug. 31 preseason game between the Houston Texans and Dallas Cowboys after in the initial days after Hurricane Harvey. Even though the game was scheduled for Dallas, league officials understood the top priority for Texans players, coaches and staff was to return to Houston and be with their families.
“Everybody here is obviously most concerned about their family, their friends, the city of Houston back home, ” Watt said at the time. “We’re obviously extremely sensitive of the situation. Guys just want to see their wives. Guys want to see their kids. Guys want to see their families. Guys want to embrace their families.”
Nothing recalibrates our priorities like a major crisis.
I vividly remember covering the Ravens-Saints preseason game in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on the Friday night before Hurricane Katrina. As the beat writer for The Times-Picayune, the primary focus of my life at the time was determining the final transactions for the 53-man roster.
A few days later, I was sleeping on wood floors in triple-digit heat, walking past dead bodies on the side of I-10 and talking to gang-bangers who were looting drug stores to get insulin supplies for the senior citizens in their neighborhood.
Suddenly, my concerns about whether Talman Gardner or Colby Bockwaldt made the final roster cut seemed utterly ridiculous and trivial.
Florida coach Jim McElwain said it best Wednesday, when asked about his school’s decision to move the kickoff of its game against Northern Colorado on Saturday from 7: 30 p.m. to noon in advance of Irma.
“How important is a game when you are talking about peoples’ lives?” McElwain said. “Whatever happens, we’re going to do what’s best.”
The NFL basically did the same on Wednesday, making the best of a difficult situation.
Obviously, it’s not ideal for the Buccaneers and Dolphins to have to play 16 consecutive weekends without a break. The NFL is a long season and the physical and mental grind can be grueling. By late November and December, the Bucs and Dolphins will feel the cumulative effects.
But that’s a small price to pay compared to the logistical issues associated with relocating the game to a neutral site at the last minute. What’s more, the Dolphins have already sacrificed their Week 4 home game against the Saints to play in London. It would be competitively disadvantageous to move another home game out of Miami.
No, of all the options, postponing the game to Week 11 makes the most sense and is the least problematic.
“When you look at all of the logistics, nothing about that kind of change is easy, ” Saints coach Sean Payton said Wednesday. “As we’ve all seen now with what’s going on in Houston, from a humanity standpoint and just the focal point on getting people out. … This (storm) appears to be stronger than one we’ve seen in a long time.”
Meteorologists say Irma, with its 185-mile-per-hour winds, is “bigger, stronger and faster” than Hurricane Andrew, which devastated south Florida in 1992. Andrew was the most destructive storm to hit Florida in history, causing $26.5 billion in damage. It’s the most powerful Atlantic storm in recorded history.
This storm is going to be a monster, unlike anything the residents of Florida have seen.
“In the grand scheme of things, football is irrelevant, ” Saints right tackle Zach Strief said Wednesday. “Not playing that game is the unquestioned right thing to do, because there are things that are going to be happening there that are way more important (than a football game) .”
Strief, who arrived in New Orleans a year after Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, scoffed at the concerns from some precincts, including players like Louisiana native Jarvis Landry, about losing a bye week and forcing the Dolphins and Bucs players to play 16 consecutive weeks.
“Yeah, that’s a tough deal for them playing (16 consecutive games) , but it’s nothing compared to what those people (of south Florida) will go through, ” Strief said. “The hardship of playing 16 consecutive games pales in comparison to the hardships of rebuilding your life.
