How will sports look after virus?
Whether for work or play, landscape forever altered
After the loss of countless games, races and matches across the many professional sports leagues, officials are plotting their returns to action — in a world that has completely changed in just two months.
The sports world has been locked down. The part of the American economy that annually generates an estimated $71 billion has been shuttered along with the rest of life, depriving athletes of their craft, workers of their jobs and fans of a diversion.
Now, after two months of inaction, sports executives are plotting a return, with scenarios ranging from the absurd to the dystopian.
A selfcontained biosphere in Las Vegas for truncated NBA playoffs. Baseball players playing half a season, contained in regional spheres, with fans, perhaps, allowed in eventually. A “normal” NFL season, which frankly seems impossible.
Simultaneously as these scenarios are cautiously being probed, the nation’s leading expert on the
coronavirus, Dr. Anthony Fauci, says that a fall outbreak of the COVID19 is “inevitable” and that without the right precautions, “we could be in for a bad fall and winter.”
“Some of the things I hear are fantasy thinking,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, an infectiousdisease specialist at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, of predictions of a quick sports comeback. “A lot of people are in denial.”
In the span of eight short weeks, we have witnessed illness, staggering death rates, devastating economic upheaval.
Where does a lack of sports fit into this harsh cultural landscape wrought by the coronavirus? Where should it fit?
“Sports represent our communal spirit, our ability to recreate and be joyous and be together,” said Elissa Epel, a professor in UCSF’s department of psychiatry. “It’s very important symbolically. But we have to think about the longterm risks of a communal, inperson event.”
Sports has been a coronavirus casualty. But it also can be a driver, in terms of awareness and information.
Without a cohesive federal policy on shuttering and reopening the country, professional sports leagues might end up setting de facto national guidelines. The top four leagues — NBA, NFL, NHL and Major League Baseball — are headquartered in blue states and red states, hot spots and relatively calm spots.
Perhaps nothing sent as sobering a message about the coronavirus crisis than the NBA abruptly shutting down in early March, before any shelterinplace mandates.
“When (commissioner) Adam Silver made that decision on March 11 to shut down the NBA, it set the course for so many businesses and even government entities to follow suit,” said Andrew Brandt, a former NFL executive and a professor at Villanova Law School. “Just think about how big that decision was.”
The NBA’s abrupt decision also provides insight into how difficult reopening sports will be.
The NBA stopped the season within minutes of learning that Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert had tested positive. In the two weeks prior to the test, the Jazz had played seven other teams in five locations, meaning Gobert potentially had infected hundreds of others.
Any plot to reopen sports has to keep Gobert in mind.
The NBA, which began allowing players to return to practice facilities in some states last week, is discussing playoffs in
Las Vegas, where thousands of empty hotel rooms could be taken over by teams and perhaps even their families. Major League Baseball has talked of both playing half a season or more in Arizona and Florida, or realigning divisions to play in a limited number of stadiums. The NHL is considering a fourarena plan to finish its season and start the playoffs. The PGA plans to resume a reconfigured schedule next month, though without fans for the first four events. UFC held an event without fans Saturday. NASCAR plans to return Sunday, also without fans. The NFL, which continues to insist it will start its season on time, has yet to float a realistic plan, but most observers think the league could play without fans.
“The NFL has this incredible luxury due to timing,” said Brandt, in reference to the league’s planned Sept. 10 regularseason start. “The calendar suits them well. They can wait and watch other leagues. It gives them a blueprint.”
But all of these scenarios require extensive testing, retesting and quarantining. With tests still unavailable to much of the general public, providing the hundreds of thousands of tests needed for athletes and team staff could create a backlash.
“I hope when we get to that point, when we’re going to try to get the sports figures tested, then we will have enough tests so that anybody who needs a test can get a test,” Fauci told the New York Times.
And what happens if another Gobert turns up? In Japan, the basketball season was scheduled to restart in April, but three players who had participated in March exhibition games tested positive. The season has been delayed indefinitely.
Germany’s top soccer league, the Bundesliga, planned to be the first major league to restart play, later this month. But the first wave of testing revealed 10 players had tested positive.
Is starting a league, only to stop it again if positive tests come back, worth it? Or is it better to table the 2020 calendar year and wait to reopen until scientific advances provide more answers?
“It seems that only through science and medicine will the next Rudy Gobert be handled without having to shut down a league,” Brandt said. “What’s the answer? Quarantining everyone? Testing everyone once a day?”
Nobody knows the answers. Even athletes aching to get back on the field wonder whether the tradeoff would be too much if they must spend their playing days in quarantine.
The Angels’ Mike Trout and the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw both expressed the same reservations that many of their colleagues have about being away from their families for extended periods of time.
“I just don’t see that happening,” Kershaw said.
What few see happening is playing games in front of fans, or at least full stadiums, in 2020.
After all, it was the sports world that produced a “biological bomb,” one considered largely responsible for the spread of the virus in Italy.
In February, a Champions League soccer game was held in Milan between Atalanta and Valencia. An estimated 40,000 residents of Bergamo, where Atalanta is based, made the trip to Milan, where they celebrated their team’s historic win in the stadium and on the streets outside with high fives and hugs. Within weeks, Bergamo was the epicenter of the deadly outbreak in Italy, and Valencia team members had brought the virus back to Spain.
The head of UCSF’s COVID19 Command Center speculated last month that the same kind of biological bomb could have gone off had the 49ers won the Super Bowl and held a parade on Market Street in the first week of February. Avoiding such a scenario was, according to Dr. Niraj Sehgal, “a gift.”
Lesson: Sports is wonderful. But it also can be deadly.
College sports, in particular football, present an entirely different set of problems. Some areas, like schools in the SEC, will be frantic to get football back. But will 90,000 fans be allowed into games, creating the potential of a biological bomb? With more and more schools announcing online classes for the summer and fall, should football players be allowed to play if students are barred from campus? Decisions in college football are controlled largely by conference commissioners, not the NCAA, so there could be a piecemeal approach by location, raising the possibility of the virus pingponging from region to region.
“There is enormous political pressure on sports teams to open back up,” said Stanford economics Professor Roger Noll. “And that can cause a natural inclination to open too soon, because of the psychological impact. The ‘getting back to normalcy’ aspect.
“But they can’t afford to be wrong. They can’t have sports become the next nursing homes.”
When and how are the questions that no one can really answer.
But, if done right, sports not only can be a diversion, it can be a leader. Just as when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver decided to shut down the NBA, the pathway to true recovery could be lit by sports.
“Maybe, wherever the NBA and other sports land in a few weeks, they can do it in reverse,” Brandt said. “It will be a road map back for other businesses and even government.
“It just shows the power of sports.”