LUCKY TO BE HERE
Sports world keeps rolling amid pandemic, giving us a much-needed sense of normalcy
Sports finds a way through pandemic — and we need that
This was the craziest week during the craziest year in decades.
And I’m not even getting into the presidential election, which is either finally over or just beginning, depending on your personal view of our ever-changing world.
The Texans were directly affected.
Rice was in the middle of it all. Major League Baseball, the world champion Los Angeles Dodgers, the Pac-12 and the Las Vegas Raiders all took turns in the national spotlight.
The NFL’s only remaining undefeated team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, was fined $350,000 on Friday for failing to follow league protocols.
A “Thursday Night Football” showdown between Aaron Rodgers’ 6-2 Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers, who represented the NFC in last season’s Super Bowl, was more about the players not playing than the athletes actually on the field.
We have learned to live with the coronavirus pandemic.
We work through it, exercise and shop while trying to avoid it, mask up before dining out, and do almost everything else with COVID-19 lingering somewhere in the back of our chaotic minds.
In the sports world, that’s been the story since March 11, when the NBA suddenly suspended its season and dominoes too big to fall all started tumbling together. Nearly eight months later? There have been almost 10 million confirmed cases and more than 236,000 deaths in the United States. And coronavirus numbers are rapidly rising again, creating hot spots across the country.
But even with all the cancellations, suspensions, fines and official explanations, the sports world keeps rolling.
Is this the right way?
The wrong way?
Right now, it feels like the only way.
To get an abbreviated season in. To have some type of normalcy while everything continues to be uneven and abnormal. To play
big games, hold huge events with limited/no fans in the stands and keep all the money rolling in.
Which means that in early November in 2020, this is just how it goes:
The Texans were forced to close their facility Thursday after linebacker Jacob Martin tested positive for coronavirus, and linebackers Whitney Mercilus and Dylan Cole were placed on the COVID-19 reserve list because of close contact. But as of Saturday evening, Romeo Crennel’s 1-6 team was still set to play a road contest Sunday against the 1-6 Jaguars.
The almighty NFL long has been a bulldozer. It was an unstoppable force at the start of the pandemic. Even with half of the league’s 32 teams dealing with some level of infection, The
Shield is still pushing toward a full campaign and Super Bowl LV in February.
At the worst, the NFL currently is planning to expand its playoffs again and create more revenue for the most powerful sports league in America.
Meanwhile, Rice will exit this weekend still having played just two football games this season. The 1-1Owls have been involved in more postponements than combined victories and losses. The latest missed opportunity: Saturday’s planned home game against UTSA, which was postponed because of COVID-19 issues affecting the Roadrunners.
UTSA already has played eight games in 2020. Rice is stuck at two. Both call Conference USA home.
Group of Five or Power Five, the coronavirus doesn’t discriminate.
Entering the week, Oregon, USC, Washington, UCLA and Utah all had the same overall record: 0-0. Then planned Washington at California and Arizona at Utah matchups never happened.
“This decision wasmade under the Pac-12’s football game cancellation policy due to Cal not having the minimum number of scholarship players available for the game as a result of a positive football student-athlete COVID-19 case and resulting isolation of
additional football student-athletes under contact tracing protocols,” the conference said in a statement when the first cancellation was announced Thursday. “Under conference policy, the game will be declared a no contest. The health and safety of our student-athletes and all those connected to Pac-12 football programs will continue to be our number one priority.”
College football keeps moving on. Random, stumbling and often awkward … but forward.
The NBA intentionally entered a bubble, dealt with backlash from the intensity of its security, and now will begin a new abbreviated season just 71 days after the last one ended.
MLB was fortunate to get in an off-and-on 60-game season — 102 contests less than the norm — and utilized mini-bubbles to successfullymake it through an extended postseason. Then Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner returned to the field in Arlington after he tested positive for COVID-19, celebrating on national TV with his world champion teammates. “Staging a baseball season during the COVID-19 pandemic was an incredibly difficult undertaking and it required significant sacrifices and an enormous amount of work by players, club staff and the commissioner’s office,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said Friday in a statement. “We all have made mistakes as we navigated these unprecedented challenges and have tried to learn from those mistakes so they are not repeated. With this inmind, I amclosing this matter by applauding Justin for accepting responsibility, apologizing and making a commitment to set a positive example going forward. Finally, I thank the millions of baseball fans for supporting the game in difficult times. … We look forward to returning stronger in 2021.”
New restrictions and lockdowns could await.
The times keep rapidly changing, while the stubborn and confusing coronavirus refuses to go away.
Is this the right way for the modern sports world to get through a pandemic? The wrong way?
History will have the final say. But I know this right now. There weremonths when it felt like college football was impossible, the new NFL season might not happen, the 2020World Series was a flickering long shot and the NBA might not make it a month inside its unprecedented bubble.
Heck, simply voting in a national election while wearing a mask felt weird and uncertain way back in May.
With all the recent positive tests, setbacks, missteps and postponements, it’s amazing we’vemade it this far — and that the big machine hasn’t ground to a hard halt again.
That daily accomplishment shouldn’t be taken for granted. Or ignored.
We’re lucky to be here, even with all the chaos.