What I Miss...
The world has shut down. There are no sports to attend, watch, cover. We are in a nation of shelter-in-place, cover your faces, stay inside. All because of a silent enemy — COVID-19 (novel coronavirus).
This enemy has placed all of the nation in a state of limbo, a perpetual Groundhog Day. But it has given us a gift. A gift of time.
Time to reflect, to think, to ponder, to better ourselves and time to be grateful.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have covered the events that I have.
Those events include: basketball tournaments, football games (both home and away), baseball games, baseball tournaments, NCAA Tournaments, ACC Football Championships, College Football Playoff Semifinals in Phoenix, Miami, New Orleans and Dallas and CFP National Championship games in The Bay, Phoenix, Tampa and New Orleans.
I miss the grind of having to cover the games.
I miss the stress of filing a gamer on the whistle.
I miss the stress of the post game scrum to get interviews done, stories written and videos uploaded.
I miss the camaraderie of being around all of the members of the beat.
I miss eating at unique restaurants in unique places.
I miss traveling via plane, train and automobile across the country to stay in sometimes not-so-fancy hotels, and sometimes palatial hotels, for numerous days at a time in hopes of providing a great story.
I also miss, something that I will not get back. I miss telling my late wife Michelle, who passed away January 1, 2020 after she won a 3.5 year battle with breast cancer, goodbye as I travel to cover a game(s). I also miss the text messages I would get from her during the game, that would normally come at the worst possible time and would generally involve the question, "What the hell are we doing?"
I also miss having her call me when she knew I was on my way home and telling me to be careful and she loved me. I miss her staying up until I get home to make sure that I made it home OK.
I miss all of these things. I cannot wait for sports to return, but I do so with an understanding that this season is only a season.
For a sports reporter the last month has been one of the most difficult of my career.
Every day I attempt to manage what content you, the readers, want to consume. And selfishly hoping that you will enjoy it because we are a numbers based business — if people do not visit our sites, interact with us on the message boards and read our stories, we may be forced to layoff workers.
