I start my blog this week with the sober reminder that the entire sports world is foolishly trying to make something happen in this calendar year. LA Times veteran columnist Bill Plaschke says exactly that in his column on April 9, 2020.
What the heck are these moguls thinking? Do they really understand the depth of the problem? Rhetorically, are they so blind to making money that it is. hell bent exercise they engage in for the purpose of refilling their gigantic coffers. As the staff at the league headquarters and on teams start to take pay cuts while the NBA stars will be paid in full for 2019-20.
Just because the curve may be flattening ever so slightly, be cautious as to how sports goes forward. Experts warn us that going back too quickly to some semblance of normalcy could easily have dire consequences. Think of the support people involved—if the MLB plan of centralizing play in Arizona goes forward, there are hundreds of people who could invade the isolation that the teams promise to have. Those hotel workers and delivery people are not going to be sequestered and watched over by MLB or their employers.
Any plans for a regular season or a tournament-like process are pipe dreams and could do way more damage than good. This doesn’t stop those who so want to get things up and running again to spout off grandiose ideas in the name of self-fulfillment.
Mike Grundy, the erstwhile head coach of the Oklahoma State Cowboys football team almost demanded that his players come back to school for spring camp on May 1 because they must. They are healthy and young so they can withstand what others are so debilitated or killed by.
He said that on April 3. By April 9 he was walking back his comments—as he should.
Dana White, the head of the UFC, a sport I detest, first had UFC 249 on an island. Then at an Indian casino in California because state rules and regulations are not followed on tribal land. ESPN, desperate for any new programming, finally came to their senses and aborted the idea on Thursday. Too many attendant problems would certainly arise—one of them the bloodletting and taking the injured combatants to a hospital. This simply is a greedy man enjoying his fame and trying to take advantage of the situation. Not when hospital beds are full and the dying continues.
Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey refers to the ones who flaunt the edicts meant to save lives as “knuckleheads.” There is the civil disobedience fines they incur along with the shame that accrues when their misdeeds are noted in town-crier like fashion.
Without better control of the situation, we simply cannot expose athletes or anybody else to the horrors of the coronavirus. A true vaccine is nowhere near completion or a successful trial. Not a hoped for remedy without sufficient trials to warrant its use, one on which politicians and cronies stand to make a profit.
Seemingly every day a new idea is floated to ignite the sports world sooner to a premature start. Placebo events like a H-O-R-S-E contest to be televised on the NBA Network and ESPN are like Battle of the Network Stars or the equally lamentable 1973 ABC program The Superstars, where heavyweight great Joe Frazier almost drowned in the first event, the 50 m swim. Garbage like that we don’t need to fulfill our prurient interests, do we?
Yet the NHL has floated an idea to bring together teams at the University of North Dakota in an attempt to salvage something from this season. North Dakota because it is isolated. North Dakota because there hasn’t been an outbreak of COVID-19. While it makes absolutely no sense, the Governor of North Dakota is all for it (think revenues here that the State never had dreamed of). He shouldn’t do it if he wants to keep the pandemic under control in his state. Perhaps the Colorado Avalanche isn’t invited because 3 members or their organization have tested positive.
That same logic that surfaced when it was reported an emergency response team from the Federal government was heading to Wyoming because the coronavirus had not invaded that great, less-populated state and it could be controlled better this way. No. No! No!!
The Masters, a fixture the first weekend in April when the magnolias bloom in Augusta, is now scheduled for when the leaves fall in November and the trees are barren. There would be no spectators, and after all this nation and other countries have gone through, the event would be devoid of passion.
Wimbledon knew this day would come. They paid insurance for a pandemic and now they are cashing in with the cancellation of this year’s tournament. The powers that be at the All England Club got this right—no tournament meant a financial windfall without harming the spectators, players and everyone who makes the fortnight run so well.
Roger Federer’s 100 volley challenge inside of a room is interesting. Captivating for the moment because Federer, Andy Murray and a host of others like Lindsay Vonn have joined his #tennisathome campaign, some wearing hats like Roger did in his video. All done for fun, in social isolation. There the priorities are straight. But then again, it is Roger Federer, not Dana White or super agent Scott Boras or Mike Grundy.
Let’s be satisfied with the reruns on ESPN (like the grippingly-real Bobby Hurley E:60 from 2019 which aired on Wednesday night). YES has a battle cry #YES We’reHere” for their newer programming involving their announcers. Straight from their homes, with player interviews conducted remotely via modern technology. Copied from the local newscasts originating form anchors and reporters homes. Saving lives in the process by socially isolating.
For now we have to deal with politicians who blindly deal in another universe while not issuing stay-in-place orders to preserve lives. Or, with the holidays of Passover and Easter upon us, people flocking to seders or church where the chances for contamination with the virus are enhanced dramatically. As opposed to well-reasoned reactions of limiting the numbers of people in a supermarket at one time and making sure everyone is wearing some kind of face covering.
We need clear and positive thinking to get through this dark chapter. We are nowhere near a vaccine that would assure us that COVID-19 will not come back more powerfully once we have turned the corner.
What we don’t need are sports leaders who rejoice in their grandiose ideas which fly in the face of reason. Our nation deserves more thinkers like Bill Plaschke than those who float the ideas of returning to the fields of play. We can live without sports until it is safe for everybody to return to a normalcy that we are redefining. We don’t need to encourage those who just don’t get it or have other motivations to pursue sports.
My editor chastised me for being so bleak last week. To that I say we are in the midst of pandemic of incredible proportions, with our resources stretched to their limits and beyond. That does not mean that there isn’t hope that a cure will come in due course. Patience is the key. Which is hard to apply diligently.
We must exercise caution and think with our hearts and our minds in sync. If the all clear for sports doesn’t come before for 2021, then I am all for it. To do otherwise shows a true lack of sense.
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