There he was in his basement, N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell, like a mirage in a sports-starved desert, to announce that the first pick of the 2020 league draft would be Louisiana State quarterback Joe Burrow, joining the Cincinnati Bengals. It was one of a handful of events to have summoned sports fans en masse since the coronavirus pandemic shut down the United States.

As the first round proceeded on Thursday night, the N.F.L.’s calculated decision to move forward with a remote version of its annual made-for-television pageant did, indeed, fill the sports void, scratching the itch of fantasy-football types and taking advantage of the twist in fortune of a suddenly all-but-empty sports calendar.

Come Saturday, however, after the selection of Mr. Irrelevant — as the 255th and last draft pick is known — a malaise will descend again. Along with it will come the real fear that the N.F.L. — and most other major sports — might not be back at all come autumn.

Even as the league basks in the draft spotlight, its teams and officials — after initially insisting that the season would proceed as usual — have been dropping hints this week that the hurdles to returning to the field are daunting, particularly with fans in attendance.

The New Orleans Saints said they would skip off-season workouts and not resume until training camp (whenever that is), citing the safety of its players and the larger community in a city considered a Covid-19 hot spot. The N.F.L. said no team’s facilities would open until all of them could. Given the latest surge in cases in the Green Bay Packers’ territory and the unpredictable patterns of the virus, a wide clearance for all 32 teams seems impossible to envision soon.

The union’s medical director was more emphatic.

“We’ll go anywhere the science takes us and nowhere the science doesn’t,” Dr. Thom Mayer said. “We’re going to look at everything as long as it keeps the patient-player, all 2,500 of them, safe.”

Goodell acknowledged that the N.F.L. understood the warnings of the governors who want to go slowly in terms of reopening their states.

“You have to be willing to be prepared to adapt,” Goodell said in an interview on ESPN. “You can’t expect or anticipate every move, but your job is to try to be as prepared as possible.”

As the nation’s largest sports league — with $15 billion in annual revenue and counting — the N.F.L. is more than a bellwether, it is an enormous economic ecosystem. The absence of games will hurt not only the thousands of workers at team facilities and stadiums, but also the biggest corporations and the television networks that do business with the N.F.L.

A continued shutdown of the league could also rattle the country’s already frayed psyche. The N.F.L. dominates the national sports conversation from Labor Day through the Super Bowl in February, and the league’s off-season calendar, including the three-day draft, is part of its drive to be a 365-day-a-year experience.

For now, the league is milking its moment as the only show in town. The N.F.L. may be the largest and most popular league in the country, but this time of year the sports landscape is often dominated by the start of baseball, the playoffs in basketball and hockey, the Masters golf tournament and the Kentucky Derby. With no competition, the N.F.L. has seen a surge in interest as it produces fresh news about its teams and players.