SPORTS ON TV MIGHT BE A SALVE TO PANDEMIC STRESS AND BOREDOM
On April 17, Adam Silver, the commissioner of the National Basketball Association, held a conference call with the media after a meeting of the board of governors.
Silver was, in a word, cautious. To all the questions about a possible resumption of his league, he said there were still too many unknowns, and that the NBA would be guided by information as it became available. He also said he thought there was an opportunity for his league to be a responsible leader. “I think we all know we were one of the first businesses to shut down at the beginning of the pandemic recognition in the United States,” Silver said.
The problem with that bit of back-patting is that it dribbles smoothly past the part where the NBA shut down only after Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tested positive for the coronavirus in March. Within days it was discovered that players on several teams had positive tests. Up until the Gobert revelation, the NBA, like the National Hockey League, had operated as usual, with fans in stands and the only nod to the coronavirus being a new restriction on how close the media could get to its players. Sure, the NBA led the way, but only because a seven-foot Frenchman forced its hand.
Silver’s revisionist history is worth keeping in mind because of something he said later in that call about the possible motivations of NBA owners. If a way could be found to return to play, he said, “they almost see that as a civic obligation.” This has become a theme as professional sports consider resuming their business amid a pandemic.
Baseball agent Scott Boras told Sportsnet this week that Major League Baseball could bring back “normalcy,” while referencing the role it played in society after the Second World War.
The National Football League at times treated its recently televised draft as a healing moment for America. And in the United Kingdom, plans to allow the top flight of English soccer to finish its season have been grandly named Project Restart, with government ministers part of the talks. Reports have said matches could be shown on Youtube to ensure a wide audience, meaning that it wouldn’t just be cable subscribers who would benefit.
All of this talk has, naturally, led to a lot of eye-rolling, and some reactions a lot more angry than that. Money is obviously a driving factor here, for the leagues and teams, and their players and broadcasters and advertisers. Critics note that it is absurd for these leagues to act like they are a salve to the nation’s wounds when a big part of their urgency to return to play is to get back to producing revenue. But, could it be both?
I have been one of those critics, writing just a few weeks ago that the problem that any league will face is that it will have to accept some degree of elevated health risk to its players and staff in any return-to-play scenario. Whatever steps are taken to mitigate the possible spread of COVID-19, with empty stands and players sequestered in hotels, the fact is that these actions will be riskier to public health than just keeping sports shuttered and telling everyone to stay home. And, if the coronavirus situation gets worse again, that will be the only acceptable result.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that any discussion of the resumption of a sports league is merely the ravings of a mad capitalist. These past weeks have made clear that there is so much uncertainty about the novel coronavirus — how it spreads, how it can be detected, how it can be stifled — that we shouldn’t pretend there are only absolutes.
Leaders like Silver and the NHL’S Gary Bettman have insisted, at least publicly, that any resumption of action would take place only if their operations would not imperil public health.
And as various bubble and isolation scenarios have been floated, that appears to be the problem for which the sports leagues do not have an answer. If their ability to play games is contingent on thousands of coronavirus tests being used on players and employees, it’s hard to square that with a public health crisis in which doctors and nurses still do not have the testing supply that they need to detect and contain the virus. Even if a league were to hold games and house players in a state or province that has the outbreak largely contained, would they be diverting testing materials from another region?
The question could yet become whether the risk involved in restarting a league, from the required materials to the sheer number of people that would be needed to run games while housing and feeding the participants, would be offset by the benefit of the entertainment that sports would provide a bored society.
No one would claim athletes to be essential workers, but it’s a label we have recently applied to bus drivers and liquor-store cashiers. Is there an argument for sports providing some sort of public good? With cinemas and theatres unlikely to allow paying customers in seats for some time, sports on television might be the only opportunity for live-event distraction for the foreseeable future. Would it help people cope a little better with the restrictions expected to be part of our lives for the foreseeable future?
It would be silly to pretend that sports are simply meaningless. They provide thrills and heartbreak and, yes, something to do. That’s not nothing, in a time of unprecedented upheaval.
None of that may yet matter. In Europe, where soccer leagues are much further on restart discussions because the virus arrived and peaked earlier there, key decisions keep being pushed back as authorities wait for the public health picture to improve. If that process is repeated here, especially with outbreaks far from tamed in the United States, it won’t be long before the question of whether the 2020 seasons can be saved becomes moot.
It is still, for now at least, a question worth asking. Even if there is money to be made.
Would it help people cope a little better with the restrictions expected to be part of our lives for the foreseeable future?