49ers' Dee Ford Drops Crucial Truth Bomb About NFL Teams Potentially Using Fake Crowd Noise

Playing baseball behind closed doors without fans is one thing, but how eerie is it going to be if we have to watch football in empty arenas with intended capacities upwards of 100,000? It's just not right. Inevitably, the conversation turns to just what teams might do on a virtual basis to help keep the adrenaline pumping over the course of the 2020 NFL season.

So, is piped-in crowd noise an acceptable reality? Quite intelligently, San Francisco 49ers defensive end Dee Ford observed that it won't feel all that strange -- it's already been happening anyway.

49ers DL Dee Ford laughs as he discusses potential virtual crowd noise in 2020: “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that a couple teams already have that goin’ on, so they won’t have any issues with it."
— David Lombardi (@LombardiHimself) May 29, 2020

Truth bombs from this man, and some poignant perspective during these strange times.

Sure, there's something to be said for perhaps being able to hear the most candid of chatter from the players on the field, but can you imagine a four-hour NFL broadcast with zero fan energy, even the fake kind? Television networks are surely doing their best to anticipate all this and innovate solutions, as the viewer experience has likely never been more make-or-break given the inability to attend games in person in any real numbers. Germany's Bundesliga is among the leagues already rolling with piped-in noise; why not the NFL?

I suspect that I'm in the minority in not liking fake crowd noise on these Bundesliga broadcasts. Sure, it's comforting, but it's an inaccurate portrayal of what's happening and deprives us of a unique opportunity to know what high-stakes matches like this sound like on-field.
— Alexander Abnos (@AnAbnos) May 26, 2020

If anything, this ought to be viewed as an opportunity for some creative flourishes. Ford certainly isn't leaning away from any of this, and he's smart to adopt this outlook.