Even without fans, sports will be gripping

My TV is completely and utterly exhausted. There’s nothing left to watch. I even got to the end of Netflix. All it said was: My God, go outside already. If I don’t get some sports soon, I may have to take Dr. Fauci hostage.

That’s why bringing back sports even without fans sounds to me like a big swimming pool full of wonderful. Listen, speaking for the fans: We don’t need to be in the stands, and we don’t need to see ourselves in the stands. Carry on. We beg of you.

Besides, sports without fans is going to be: So. Much. Fun.

Take the PGA Tour, which plans to start up again, fanless, June 11 in Fort Worth, Texas. I’m salivating at the prospect of watching superstars forced to play the same golf everybody else does. Do you know how many times I’ve seen Tiger Woods hit a lousy shot that’s bounding over the green, headed for trouble, only to carom off a fan and leave him in good shape? Sometimes his fans do it on purpose. (They didn’t start it; human backstops used to paint bull’s eyes on their T-shirts to help their hero, Arnold Palmer.)

For once, the Tour pros are going to have to gouge their balls out of kneehigh spinach that hasn’t been conveniently trampled down by fans. Wait till they discover how hard it is to find a Titleist in an ice plant jungle when there aren’t 20,000 people helping you look for it. No more free drops from grandstands after hitting a banana 5-iron, either. But, hey, at least they won’t have to hear the “You da man!” guy.

Take the NBA, which hopes to open soon, perhaps with all the teams playing in only two cities: Las Vegas and Orlando, Florida. With no crowd noise, you’re going to hear how many F-bombs these guys drop, which is just slightly more than Teamsters on a bender. You’ll find out whether people screaming themselves blue and waving inflatable bricks behind the basket had any effect on free throw averages. You’ll even find out what players say when they hear the courtside TV analyst criticizing their skills (“Hey, man, what the hell? My mom is watching this!”).

Actually, hearing the commentary might be helpful. It was the other night in Florida when the first large fanless U.S. sports event was held: UFC 249 from Jacksonville, Florida. Not one but two fighters admit they won their matches with help from ringside analyst Daniel Cormier. Carla Esparza said she could hear Cormier ripping her strategy as she was fighting Michelle Waterson. “He was kind of criticizing me and part of me was, like, ‘Hey, that’s messed up. Why are you saying that?’” Esparza said. “But I was, like, ‘That’s actually a good idea.’”

Take baseball, which is talking about opening up again for an 82-game season without fans on the Fourth of July weekend. There has been only one other game in baseball history played without fans – not counting Montreal Expos games. It was in 2015, when the Chicago White Sox played the Orioles in Baltimore during rioting in the city. The Orioles’ Chris Davis hit a monster three-run homer in the first that wound up settling near a street exit. And it just sat there, perhaps wondering what a baseball has to do to get some love.

Owners! Imagine the marketing possibilities for all those empty seats! How much could you raise for charity if – say, for a Los Angeles Lakers-Milwaukee Bucks NBA Finals game – you auctioned two tickets, and only two tickets, in each section? Jack Nicholson alone would pay enough to feed most of Torrance. And how lovely would it be if the Cubs invited one fan, and only one fan, to every game? And that fan was the luckless Steve Bartman? Wouldn’t it be delicious if every team allowed one fan, and one fan only, to come in and heckle?

Hey Clayton Kershaw! Somebody flattened your curve!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want this forever. No-fans stinks for all the folks who make a living working these games – the ushers, the car-parkers and the hot-dog slingers. Nobody wants to see the Phoenix Gorilla on the street corner flipping a Progressive sign.

But until we get to Phase 917 – or wherever “filling stadiums again” ranks in the country’s reopening priorities this is all we have. Trust me, it’s still going to be sports, and it’s still going to be gripping.

Don’t forget, one of the greatest basketball games ever played was a scrimmage – Jordan’s Team vs. Magic’s Team just before the 1992 Dream Team Olympics – held in a locked Monaco gym in front of exactly nobody.

Not even Drake.

Reilly, a former Sports Illustrated and ESPN contributor, is the author of “Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.”