Where will sports world be after the coronavirus pandemic?

“Sports are too much with us,” wrote Roger Angell at the start of “The Interior Stadium,” the closing chapter of his 1972 baseball classic book, “The Summer Game.”

Today, we need to insert the phrase “until they’re not” after it.

We are consuming sports today in interior stadiums of our own, watching every sports channel transform into a version of ESPN Classic, from the Big Ten Network to YES. Meanwhile, the sports equipment bags of every athlete — along with their physical skills — are dust-collecting in place. Backboards stripped of rims to prevent play are the coronavirus’ version of the trash talk that ordinarily flows on the nowempty asphalt courts.

That is where we are in May 2020. But where will sports be when this rotten spring turns into summer and summer slips into autumn and autumn gives way to winter?

We do not know because we are not in charge. The coronavirus is. It is an irresistible force and an unstoppable object, as sportswriters are apt to state when a great offense collides with a great defense. It brushed aside sports this spring as it barreled through humanity across continents.

The virus has already changed sports on an individual level. Think of the high school senior pitcher ready to start on the varsity squad after three years waiting for the chance. Her chance to experience the rush of charging out on the field while wearing the varsity school colors is gone forever.

The immediate damage is known by what is and will be absent.

For one, the Summer Olympics have been postponed until 2021. In tennis, the U.K. lost Wimbledon and the British Open to cancellations. In the U.S., the MLB, NBA and NHL seasons are on hold, while the WNBA has indefinitely postponed its start originally scheduled for May 15. The Masters golf tournament has been moved to the fall. The Travelers Championship in Cromwell will take place as scheduled as will other PGA events after that but without fans. Physical distancing works in golf like no other sport.

When the coronavirus first swept winter sports athletes from their locker rooms just as their post-seasons began. At least they played a full season and can reflect on their accomplishments to that point, and there is a chance — however slight — that the NBA and NHL may hold hermetically sealed playoffs at some point. Officials from the leagues have not retreated from that fantasy for now. Major League Baseball is thinking about opening its season in spring training parks clustered in Arizona and Florida.

In short, pro sports are Macgyvering their seasons to save television revenue, their lifeblood.

What then about football when autumn looms and Friday night’s lights are scheduled to be turned on?

College athletic directors are adamant that football will be played only if students are allowed back on campuses that closed in March as the contagion raged. The same holds for high schools.

For big-time college programs, an autumn without football may doom non-revenue sports whose funding depends entirely on television revenue flowing into the athletic departments from lucrative television contracts and conference cable networks. The cancellation of NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments in March provides evidence of what is at stake, The NCAA budgeted $600 million to distribute to member schools but instead delivered $375 million by cobbling together insurance and cash on hand. The loss of football would obliterate budgets.

The NFL is best positioned to withstand a start deeper in the year if the coronavirus is contained because it is too deeply embedded in American culture to be shown off so readily. Just look at the frenzy accompanying the

NFL Draft this month. The NFL is always trending.

One scenario suggests American sports will recover from the pandemic in one spasm that would happily shut down the country and put the coronavirus in the rear-mirror.

This is how it plays out: The NFL, college football, the NBA, WNBA and NHL delay their starts until November. College basketball tips off that month, too, along with high school sports. That means the following would be stuffed into one month a year from now: The Final Four, The Masters, the Stanley Cup and NBA and WNBA playoffs, the College Football Playoffs, the start of the baseball season — and the Super Bowl.

That possibility is the only one streaming in the country’s optimistic interior stadium. The title? “America’s Homecoming, April 2021.”

Sports again will be too much with us, thankfully.