Peter King, who writes the Football Morning in America column for NBC, spoke with Anthony Fauci about COVID-19.

Dr. Fauci’s comments are pretty consistent with what he’s already said about the viability of playing sports in empty arenas, but he also touched on the subject of playing in front of semi-filled stadiums, which is a topic that hasn’t really been discussed that much, by comparison.

Fauci:

“I think it’s feasible that negative testing players could play to an empty stadium,” Fauci said. “Is it guaranteed? No way . . . There will be virus out there and you will know your players are negative at the time they step onto the field. You’re not endangering . . . Also, if the virus is so low that even in the general community the risk is low, then I could see filling a third of the stadium or half the stadium so people could be six feet apart. I mean, that’s something that is again feasible depending on the level of infection. I keep getting back to that: It’s going to depend. Like, right now, if you fast forward, and it is now September. The season starts. I say you can’t have a season—it’s impossible. There’s too much infection out there. It doesn’t matter what you do. But I would hope that by the time you get to September it’s not gonna be the way it is right now.”

Theoretically, you could put people 4-6 seats apart, maybe stagger it by rows so they aren’t close to one another. I guess you couldn’t high-five anybody after a touchdown or go get a hot dog at halftime or anything like that. It would basically be like a Miami Marlins game without concessions or entertainment outside of the on-field slop.

Just for the sake of the exercise, I took this seating chart image from Seat Geek and put stars over the seats where you might be able to seat fans to properly space them out:

Might not be ideal, but it’s something. Not sure how you’d keep people from moving around, though, or how you’d enforce the rules to make sure they aren’t doing anything dumb. Also, if you took your 10-year-old son to the game, you wouldn’t be able to sit together, unless they make an exception for family members.

Just thinking out loud here. We all know that finding a way to get fans in the stadiums will take a back seat to proper player testing and just getting the product back on the field.