A glimmer of hope for sports, but don’t pop champagne yet
Finally, some signs of hope. It’s only a glimmer. Let’s not pop the champagne just yet.
But there’s baseball in South Korea and Taiwan. NASCAR is getting ready to crank up its engines, and German soccer is revving to go, too. The PGA Tour and IndyCar racing are planning to resume next month, and even the tiniest of steps — Major League Soccer clubs beginning individual workouts, a handful of NBA teams reopening their training facilities Friday — are an indication that some form of normality is returning.
“People are calling it the new normal,” said Darren Eales, president of the Atlanta United MLS club. “We’re calling the now normal. It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen, but we have to deal with it.”
Certainly, anyone with the least bit of fandom running through their bones is eager to see live sports again — even if they can’t see it in person.
That was apparent from the record ratings for the NFL draft, not to mention the huge audiences tuning in for the Michael Jordan documentary “The Last Dance.”
“Good God, do I want to watch a baseball game,” exclaimed Amy Bass, a professor of sports studies at Manhattanville College just north of New York City. “We’re constantly saying that sports is not just an escape, that we can learn a lot from sports. But you know what? They are an escape.”
That’s something we could all use right now, with the death toll climbing past a quarter-million worldwide and approaching 80,000 in the United States, not to mention the paralyzing economic slump that has crippled many businesses and left tens of millions to deal with the despair of unemployment.
Yep, we need sports more than ever, but we also need to understand that things aren’t going to be the way they were before.
Not in the short term, for sure.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step,” Eales said. “But we want to be cautious. The most important thing is to come back in a safe manner.”
That’s a lesson the NFL will soon have to consider. The pandemic struck in the U.S. after the Super Bowl, so the league has been able to carry on largely with business as usual. Free agency. A remote draft that was a big hit.
And Thursday night’s ridiculously over-hyped release of the 2020 schedule, which has a full slate of games that are supposed to begin in early September.
It seems quite likely the NFL (and college football, too) will have to play at least some of its games in empty stadiums, unless a vaccine or an effective treatment comes along far sooner than anyone is projecting. But that shouldn’t be a huge drawback for the NFL, which relies on lucrative television deals for the bulk of its revenue.
The outlook isn’t nearly as hopeful for other leagues, in this country and around the world.
The Canadian Football League will likely have to cancel its season, according to Commissioner Randy Ambrosie, who told lawmakers this week that the CFL’s future is “very much in jeopardy” without a hefty government bailout.
Bass said a more extensive weeding-out of less-prominent leagues and sports might be one of the biggest legacies of the pandemic.
“I suspect we’re going to see a squashing of some sports by the others,” she said. “While the ratings for the NFL draft were off the board, look at what kind of coverage the WNBA draft got. I think women’s sports are going to suffer.”
But those are issues for another day.
Let’s try to keep this positive vibe going. Paul Newberry is a sports columnist for The Associated Press.