My fellow Winstonians, I come before you bearing the scoop of the offseason!

In our present moment, where the sport-o-sphere is gripped in the fever of a virus of such power unseen since Jim Rome tried to eradicate his Clones, it behooves us to take nothing for granted, even the omnipresent and eternal existence of the sixteen game epic pageantry of the National Football League regular season! In this spirit, I reached out to NFL Insiders (TM ESPN) in all home cities of our beloved teams to see what their plans are for responding to the current pandemic. Almost uniformly did I get a curt response of “wait and see” until I reached out to a sage but old friend in California, who immediately spilled me the scoop of my life upon hearing my query:

“There will be no Chargers games played in San Diego in 2020.”

Period.

Full stop.

No malarkey.

Could this be? Could the great city of San Diego be so forthright and prescient as to have already ended the Chargers’ NFL season before it even drafted, all due to the novel Covid-19 strain of the Coronavirus? I dug in deeper, and asked this very question outright.

“Well…” he said, and there was a very, very pregnant pause, “No.”

“You’re certain?” I said, smelling a respitorally-troubled rat, “It’s not due to the coronavirus?”

“No, Bud,” he said, a slight tone of incredulousness in his voice, “Haven’t you been reading the news?”

Dear readers, whom amongst us has a better news appetite than yours truly? Of course I read the cable news chyrons of the one channel I have on during the day, and the only topics flooding the airwaves at all germane to football in San Diego are a.) the Coronoavirus outbreak, and b.) unexplained mass hysteria in the La Jolla area. I knew my inside source had to be covering for the Powers That Be, but I, your intrepid news bloodhound, pressed on:

“What about enacting a Plan B? Perhaps play this season in Los Angeles?”

Laughter erupted from my telephone receiver at that point.

“Bud… I can promise you,” he said, recovering his composure,

“Nobody in Los Angeles is interested in attending a Chargers game.”