'There's no playbook' for a pandemic: Pittsburgh Steelers part-owner

Tulco founder and Pittsburgh Steelers part-owner, Thomas Tull, joins 'Influencers with Andy Serwer' to discuss the NFL's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the upcoming football season.

Video transcript

ANDY SERWER: How would you assess the recently completed NFL season? One for the ages, no doubt.

THOMAS TULL: I think the league actually did a phenomenal job. If you stop and think about it, every game was played under less-than-ideal circumstances. And we had playoffs. We had a Super Bowl. I thought it was a powerful moment when those 7,500 frontline health care workers were at the Super Bowl. I thought that was incredibly powerful.

The crazy thing about this period of time-- and you think about what teachers are going through, certainly health care workers, normal people trying to figure out and navigate their way through this-- there's no playbook for any of this. So on one hand, you want to constantly be thinking about what is best, and you have to put the players and the fans-- and everybody's personal safety must be the guiding light.

And at the same time, so many fans, just personally and then from the league, saying, please, don't take away-- football is important and that sort of escapism, certainly nowhere near as important-- I don't want to be mistaken for saying that football is something that had to go on. But just to provide some level of entertainment and normalcy, I thought it was important. And I think the league did a really nice job getting through this. Certainly we'll remember it forever.

And I really hope we don't have to do it again, and we can return to some level of normalcy. But I'm glad that we played. Obviously, the end didn't turn out too well for our team. But just to see the games played and see it through, I thought, was an accomplishment.

ANDY SERWER: Let me pick up on that one point you just made there about next season. What do you think the chances are of it being a normal season next fall?

THOMAS TULL: Well, depending on what normal's definition is-- do I think there will be fans? Is it going to be full? I have no idea. But do I think fans will regularly attend? I'm personally optimistic. Do I think that perhaps checkpoints and masks might be a part of that equation somewhere? That's not hard to envision.

Do I think testing is going to be a part of it, player safety, all those things? Certainly I do. I'm rooting for our entire country on the vaccine front to try to get things distributed as quickly as we can, especially to the people that need it the most. And hopefully, we can all get back to living.

And I think about everything from small business owners who are trying to make it to the other side of this, which is really the backbone of this country, and on the other hand, I think what some of the scientists have pulled off in terms of these vaccines-- I really think we're going to look back in time and realize what a monumental achievement it is. I'm not fluent in biomed, but friends that are, that are into deep research, have just said, you have no idea what an accomplishment it is at this speed and velocity to pull this off. And so hopefully that gets rolled out, and we can move ahead.