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Reporter Asks Governor Tom Wolf About “Apparent Hypocrisy” on Return of Sports
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Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf held a press briefing a short time ago on COVID-19 and the topic of organized sports came up.
For a bit of background, Monday Wolf said that NASCAR would be able to hold events at Pocono Raceway next month, on the condition that Monroe County has entered the “yellow phase” of his reopening plan. As of right now, Monroe remains under “red” status along with the rest of the counties that make up the southeastern part of the commonwealth.
Under the current plan, organized sports will be allowed to return only when counties hit the “green” phase of reopening, and Tuesday Wolf was asked why NASCAR was able to operate under the yellow phase instead:
Gov. Wolf was asked today why NASCAR would be allowed to race in a yellow phase county while other organized sports need to wait until the green phase.@abc27News @abc27Sports
Here is his answer: pic.twitter.com/C4JA76IGpY
— Allie Berube (@allieberube) May 19, 2020
It’s not much of an answer, but the question is valid.
If Wolf wanted to draw a distinction between NASCAR, where guys are in cars and driving around a track, vs. basketball players breathing on each other in close proximity, he could certainly do that. You can treat individual sports differently from team sports instead of lumping them together. But if you’re going with a blanket policy based on green status, yet allowing Pocono to operate under yellow, then yeah, it sounds hypocritical.
Maybe they just revamp the policy as they go along. That seems like the appropriate way to handle a fluid situation.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com