Just when I was getting fired up to be back at the Liberty Bowl this fall.

Just as I started contemplating the return of fans to Neyland Stadium and the Grove.

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Just as I began to convince myself that college football stadiums will be at least half-filled when the season kicks off.

I talked to Dr. Jon McCullers who said I’d be “bathed in the virus” if I were sitting six feet in front of an infectious fan for three hours at a stadium.

So never mind!

McCullers is an infectious disease specialist — as well as an associate dean at the University of Tennessee Medical Center and the pediatrician-in-chief at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital — who serves on the city-county task force on COVID-19 and chairs a separate task force on reopening the University of Tennessee.

McCullers created a stir when he appeared on my radio show a month ago and said, almost in passing, “You’re not going to have spectators in Neyland Stadium this year.”

McCullers told me he “got in a little trouble” for that comment. You can imagine, right?

So when McCullers returned to my show Thursday, and I asked him about the future of football at Tennessee and Memphis, he said: “I’m an official at the University of Tennessee so I really can’t comment on what UT might be doing, and I’m on the city-county task force that reviews these things.”

A quick learner, McCullers is.

But then I asked him about spectator sports in general. And McCullers was thoughtfully direct.

“Spectator sports are going to be a problem,” he said. “It’s an inherently risky thing.”

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Consider the whole 6-feet-of-social-distancing guideline, for starters. McCullers said that doesn’t work at a football game.

“It’s not as simple as saying ‘Let’s keep everybody 6-feet apart,’ ” he said. “That 6-feet-apart rule is based on an estimate by somebody at the CDC that said, ‘If you’re talking to me, most of the particles that will come out of my mouth will settle to the ground within 6 feet.’ That’s what that’s based on.  

“But if you think about your risk of infection, your risk is really your exposure (how much virus is getting to you) versus time (the amount of time you spend in that exposure). So we use 6 feet as kind of an estimate where the exposure is a lot less, but not zero. Then we get to the duration part and you start thinking about sitting for three hours at a football game. That’s a very different duration than going to the concession stand at the football game. You’re 6 feet apart at the concession stand, you’re there for five minutes, the duration of exposure is short. You’re sitting 6 feet away from someone for three hours, it’s a very different thing, a much higher risk of infection.

“That’s why we feel pretty comfortable about the 6-feet rule for walking into the grocery store or getting takeout at a restaurant or something like that, but not for sitting there for three hours. I think most sports leagues, as they look at this, are saying 6 feet probably isn’t the answer, that probably because of the duration it represents a risk. But is the right distance 10 feet? Is it 12 feet? Is it 15 feet? Tennessee is going to start allowing live music back, but they are saying there must be 15 feet between the performer and the audience.”

The link between musicians and fans isn’t as far-fetched as it may seem. Both have been known to make a lot of noise.

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“Singing, chanting, shouting and yelling are very high risk for spreading this virus,” McCullers said. “All these super-spreader events that we have seen, a lot of them have been church services, they’ve been fans cheering in stadiums. And if you are sitting 6 feet behind me yelling at the officials or cheering for a touchdown, I’m getting bathed in the virus because you just put out a lot more virus if you’re yelling or cheering.”

Yuck.

I should say here that McCullers is not an alarmist on the subject of COVID-19. He got on a plane not long ago and thinks air travel is “OK, if done right.” He is in favor of opening up universities this fall as long as there are suitable precautions in place. He talks about “managing” the pandemic and balancing public health against other priorities. 

“At the end, you have to recognize that you’re going to have some disease,” McCullers said.

Which makes his skepticism about spectator sports even more credible. Plus, he’s got math.

“We’re seeing about 100 cases a day (in Shelby County),” he said. “If you do the math across the city, probably 1-in-200 to 1-in-300 people are infectious right now. So if we’re going to put 10,000 people in an entertainment venue, well, that’s 50 people who are going to have coronavirus. You don’t want to be sitting for three hours, 6 feet away from someone with coronavirus. If there’s 50 of them there, how many people are they exposing and potentially infecting? That’s the public health concern.”

That’s why the NBA is coming back with no fans. Why the German soccer league is coming back with no fans. Why NASCAR is coming back with 1,000 fans for their race at Homestead (seats 46,000) and 5,000 fans for their race at Talladega (seats 175,000). That’s why the PGA Tour is coming back with 5,000 fans spread over an entire golf course.

So it’s nice to imagine college football coming back to half-filled stadiums in the fall. It’s nice to think of fans spreading out in the expanse of the Liberty Bowl.

But at the moment?

McCullers remains skeptical.

“I can’t see getting to half-capacity,” he said. “Or even close to that.”