Could sports be doing a disservice?
Jazz’s Rudy Gobert COVID-19.
Who doesn’t remember where they were that evening when the alert lit up our phones and television screens? The NBA awakened a nation to the overwhelming magnitude of the crisis in a way that the White House had not. When the NBA said it was shutting down, it was clear the sports world had found its voice.
Over the next couple of days, as sports disappeared before our eyes, our great escape became a sobering mirror of our society. As sports went, so went the nation.
The leadership the sports world exhibited in those early days was exemplary. When some of our political leaders went south, sports became our North Star. Sports showed us the way.
But now, with its timelines and plans and schedules, the sports world is getting ahead of itself, and all of us. Of course it’s exciting to think about baseball coming back. But what if it’s not returning this year? What if MLB and the NBA and NHL won’t be able to play at all the rest of this year? What if the NFL can’t either?
Optimism is lovely, but honesty matters tested positive for even more right now. There’s a distinct possibility that our big pro sports leagues will be shuttered until 2021. Not many people in the sports world want to admit it, but of course that’s a possibility.
We’re in the middle of a pandemic. Our testing is severely lacking. We have no vaccine, obviously, and no treatments. What the next few months hold is anyone’s guess. Who on Valentine’s Day would have pictured that this is what mid-May would look like?
There were close to 90,000 deaths in the United States from COVID-19 at press time, and a new coronavirus model is predicting 147,000 deaths in the United States by August. Governors who have issued stringent, no-nonsense restrictions on their states are far more popular than those who have loosened quarantine orders, a new Washington PostIpsos poll found.
Perhaps we’ll get lucky and sports will find a way back before 2021. If the nation is ready, then sports should by all means return.
But right now, the nation is nowhere near ready. Two months ago, the sports world knew when to stop. As we’re finding out, it’s far more difficult to know when to start again.