We won’t stomach that empty feeling
Even in reduced numbers, U.S. fans will jump to return to games
If you had a dollar for every time you’ve heard that nothing good happens after midnight, you would have enough money to pay for all the good things that happen after midnight. There is fun to be had after hours. If a good percentage of your entertainment involves sports, fun at any hour is in short supply in this coronavirus-captured society.
This demand led ESPN to giddily announce that it had reached an agreement to air Korean Baseball Organization games, hoping to fill the void left by the postponement of almost all sporting events for the last two months.
Midnight Madness, thanks to the time difference, started Monday night, with the NC Dinos playing the Samsung Lions.
Korean baseball, late at night, with no fans in the stands?
I’m not that desperate.
As is the case with many an odd soccer league — not to mention an unfortunate number of Texas A&M football games — the most entertaining aspect of the KBO is the choreographed crowd activities, with songs galore from first pitch to last out.
A sport on television in a foreign
country without any recognizable names would be bad enough. Without the in-stadium energy that makes you want to be there, it is unwatchable.
The bat flips in the KBO are legendary but not worth staying up past midnight.
Surely the league has talented players who play good baseball, but what level of desperate Jonesing must one be suffering from for midnight Korean baseball to be the fix?
That there was any social media buzz at all for these live games indicated how distressed the American sports fan is without sports.
We might be in trouble.
I have thought that it would be a challenge for leagues to get fans back into stadiums and arenas while COVID-19 is still a threat. I am starting to believe that won’t be the case.
If the Rockets and Astros were forced to do a slow, 25-percent capacity, rollout to games as restaurants in Texas were allowed to do this past weekend, they would have little difficulty filling the seat quota.
On “Good Morning America” Tuesday, Miami Dolphins CEO Tom Garfinkel talked about a potential strategy for hosting games at Hard Rock Stadium.
It would involve social distancing measures, of course, with the key one being a limit of 15,000 fans in the 65,000-seat stadium.
Unless there is a dramatic turn in fortunes, which health experts say is possible, playing before smaller crowds is more likely to be the U.S. sports world’s coronavirus plan than in empty stadiums.
Regardless, there will be hundreds of protesters outside stadiums when the leagues return. Whether fans are allowed in or locked out won’t matter.
That’s called freedom. Or something like that.
Leagues are losing too much revenue to pass up having even a quarter of the house full of fans.
As state after state reopens, don’t be surprised if they begin finding advisors who will recommend allowing a few more people into stadiums than just those deemed essential to running the games.
The NFL, which will release its schedule Thursday as if it doesn’t have a care in the world, has the best chance of letting fans in, because its real season doesn’t begin for four months.
The Texans are making an intelligent, forward-thinking move by hiring a hygiene coordinator. While they are the first to do this, their enterprising move will be the new world order.
Every move a franchise makes along these lines, even ones that are cosmetic and superficial, will improve fans’ confidence in attending games.
It is more on the leagues to convince us that it is safe to return
to stadiums than local governments. You might be surprised at the number of people who trust their local NFL franchise more than they do City Hall.
Leagues want fans to come to stadiums, spend money and enjoy the games, and come back again to enjoy the games and spend more money.
Sure, MLB and the NBA could follow the Korean model in their returns, but they are more likely to take the Korean example and shape it to fit U.S. politics and sensibilities.
Open the doors to NRG Stadium for a home game in September, and fans will line up — some even six feet apart — to get in.
As much as they like to complain about Bill O’Brien and Cal McNair and the always closed roof and Clay Walker’s anthem, and the expensive beer, thousands of Texans faithful buy highpriced tickets for every game. Even when the team wasn’t any good.
This year’s team will be good. So, people will purchase however many seats the Texans can get approved to fill.
My guess is the cities that won’t allow teams to open their stadium doors won’t even be a major sticking point for the NFL. So much for that team’s homefield advantage.
Are there more important things? Well, of course, you would think that.
And I bet you won’t be up late at night watching the SK Wyverns and the Suwon KT Wiz play in an empty stadium in Korea.
As if nothing good can happen after midnight.