TIME TO REASSESS PRIORITIES
Sports take back seat to pandemic: Todd
In the space of a couple of hours Wednesday evening, our little world was altered almost beyond our comprehension.
All the petty daily concerns — paying down the mortgage, when to get the winter tires taken off the car, minor eye surgery scheduled for the end of the month — were swept away, replaced by the universal dread of an implacable, unseen pandemic sweeping the globe. (The real menace, unsurprisingly, was something you can’t keep out with a border wall or blast with an AR-15.)
The dominoes began to fall with a news item from the NBA: Rudy Gobert, an agile seven-foot centre and supreme shot blocker from France had tested positive for COVID -19. Minutes before tipoff, Gobert’s Utah Jazz teammates and the Oklahoma City Thunder had been sent back to their locker rooms.
By the end of the evening, the NBA (as in most things, a global leader in intelligent response) had suspended play indefinitely. It would take some arm-twisting from Gary Bettman, but NHL owners had no choice but to follow suit the next day.
After that, they fell like 10-pins: MLB cancelled the remainder of spring training (including the two Blue Jays games scheduled for the Big O) and postponed the start of the regular season by two weeks. F1 cancelled the season-opening race in Melbourne and now hopes to rev up on May 20 at the earliest, barely in time for the Montreal Grand Prix. Curling world championships, university sports, the WTA, the ATP, Indian Wells, La Liga, the Bundesliga, Ligue 1, Serie A.
Perhaps most revealing of all the cancellations, suspensions and postponements was the decision by the NCAA to shut down March Madness by cancelling the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. The price tag is stunning: the men’s tournament alone is worth a cool $1 billion to the NCAA, every dollar of it earned on the backs of unpaid athletes.
The PGA allowed the Players Championship to begin Thursday. By Friday morning, however, even the PGA had to bow to the inevitable: the final three rounds were cancelled and the players were to split $15 million in prize money.
About 12 hours later, Augusta National announced it was postponing the Masters.
In England (this is the home of Brexit, remember?) the Premier League dragged its feet but finally suspended the season, leaving a possible split. Some clubs want the season declared void. Liverpool, understandably, wants its historic championship campaign recognized.
Relegation and promotion are on the line, along with places in the Champions League and the Europa League, both of which are also suspended. It’s going to be a royal mess and the only sure winners will be the lawyers paid to sort it out.
None of which is much consolation to sports fans left channel-surfing between poker tournaments and reruns of last year’s curling championships.
Ahead looms the possibility that much more will be taken down: the French Open, Wimbledon, the Giro d’italia (already postponed) and the Tour de France, Euro 2020, and the big enchilada: the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Now, and for the conceivable future, the priority has to be the well-being of the athletes, officials, coaches, trainers, media, fans and popcorn vendors, everyone connected with these events. We’re all in this together, from NBA players earning $30 million a year to the guy paid $12 an hour to sweep out the arena.
Yet days into this shutdown, I still find myself checking nonexistent scores on my phone. It wasn’t always this way, but social
media and smartphones have taken a diversion that ought to consume a few hours a week at most and turned it into a 24/7 obsession.
With the entire bloated world of sports on hiatus, this will be a good time to re-evaluate. Do we really need to subscribe to a dozen different sports channels and DAZN? Is it sane to find ourselves tossing and turning and unable to sleep because our team is in the throes of an eight-game losing streak? Or to waste an entire day watching the meaningless blather of trade deadline day?
Perhaps it takes a global catastrophe to reorder our priorities.
Hockey fans are used to this: the NHL had a difficult time deciding to shut down in the face of a pandemic, but had no problem at all with closing the doors to put the screws to the players. With the various lockouts, we could turn to baseball, basketball, cycling, tennis. Now it’s all gone and we have a period of merciful silence in which to regain our collective sanity.
No one knows where we’re headed or how this will play out, in life or in sports. Perhaps there will be a Stanley Cup awarded this season, perhaps (as in 1919) there will be no champion.
At best, we’re in for a monthlong shutdown if not more, perhaps much more. Whatever, there are more pressing, lifeand-death concerns.
Use the extra time well. Take care of your family. Be safe. Be responsible. Avoid public gatherings. Take the advice of that wonderful Italian nonna and sneeze into your sleeve. Wash your hands.
And above all, be kind.