Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the NFL is beginning to embrace the possibility of playing the entire 2020-21 season without fans in attendance.
That would be especially unfortunate for the Los Angeles Rams, who are opening up their brand new state-of-the-art SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
SoFi Stadium is set to hold more than 70,000 people, so it certainly will be weird playing games there for the first time with no one in attendance.
Rams star Aaron Donald recently spoke about that possibility, believing that it wouldn’t be any fun for the players, via Lindsey Thiry of ESPN:
“You need fans to play a game,” Donald said Thursday on a video conference with reporters. “I don’t see how you could play a game without no fans. I feel like that takes out the excitement and the fun out of the game …
“I feel like the fans is what pick you up. The fans is what makes the game exciting. The fans will give you that extra juice when you’re tired and fatigued, when you make that big play and you hear 80,000 fans going crazy. That just pumps you up.”
Donald added that the only reason he and his teammates practice as hard as they do is so they can show up for the fans every Sunday:
“You practice, and practice is practice. And then you prepare to play a game and be on a big stage and play in front of a crowd,” Donald said. “… Just no excitement [without fans]. It wouldn’t be fun to me. I don’t think it would be fun to play a football game without fans.”
While there is a ton of truth to what Donald is saying, the reality everyone lives in is that it’s currently unsafe to have that many people in one place together due to coronavirus.
So while Donald and the Rams will have to manage and find other motivation in 2020, hopefully by the time the 2021 season rolls around, everything will be back to normal and SoFi Stadium will be hosting 70,000-plus fans every Sunday.
