When Will Our Team Sports Return? Expect a Long Road Back.
For two months, we’ve been without live sporting events. During that time, I’ve been reluctant to write a whole lot about it.
I know you’re getting your maximum dose of Covid-19 news everywhere you turn. I figured that you would welcome the occasional break, with something else to read about. So I’ve tried to write about other things. And I will continue to do that. For you and me.
But today, let’s talk about it.
People ask me when sports will be back. Like everyone else, I can only guess.
But I think it’s going to be a longer rather than shorter wait for our team sports.
When I see the NFL schedule come out, I think, ``Let’s hope they can do that. Start playing on time in September.’’ But I don’t expect it. To do that, they’re going to need to start training camp in July or maybe early August. For all of our false springs, that’s not that far away.
When I hear the latest plan for a truncated Major League Baseball season, I feel the same way. Wouldn’t it be great if they could start playing baseball in July? Play a truncated 80-game season and top it off with a sawed-off post-season? That would mean gathering teams in June. That’s even sooner.
It’s good to explore the feasibility of these ``game on’’ scdenarios, even if they require some assumptions about containing pandemic peril. They give us hope.
If there is a marvelous breakthrough, then the plans are in place. But 2020 has not been a good year for marvelous breakthroughs.
And then there’s college football, which is what this TMG website is all about.
College football, sadly, has the most hurdles to clear.
Pro sports can proceed with ``essential-personnel’’ scenarios. In South Korea and Taiwan, baseball has returned, and is being played without fans. Hats off to the Lotte Giants, who got off to a 5-0 start and led the Korean Baseball Organization going into Tuesday’s games. Or maybe it’s Wednesday’s games. That international dateline always messes with my head.
For college football to happen, college campuses need to be open in some form or another. And given that those openings will not all happen at once, even if they miraculously happen in time for some semblance of college football this fall, the schedules and logistics are boggling.
My colleagues here at TMG, notably Tony Barnhart and Mark Blaudschun, have been all over the discouraging possibilities. Let’s just say it’s either third-and-long, or fourth-and-long, for NCAA football in 2020.
The glimmers of hope in the sports world are golf and auto racing, which have fewer logistical issues, already have announced return dates.
NASCAR is scheduled to resume on Sunday with seven—count ’em, seven—races in 11 days—the first three in Darlington, S.C., and the final four in Charlotte, N.C.
Even though auto racing is very different from baseball or football, those races will give all sports a glimpse of the potential problems of staging an event in a pandemic. Such as: What happens if one person tests positive for the virus?
The PGA has announced plans to resume in Fort Worth, Tex., on Thursday, June 11. But we’ll see if that happens. Even the plan for tournaments without spectators is ambitious, given the Covid-19 concerns that everyone is dealing with.
Where does that leave sports fans? Watching replays from last year and beyond. And hopefully reading more, exploring new pursuits, spending more time on Zoom and all those other things that people with extra time on their hands do.
As disappointing as the sports vacuum is, though, there are people with real problems. How to pay the bills, how to put food on the table, how to stay safe.
When I think about how disappointing it is that we are missing our beloved sporting events—if that’s the worst thing we’re dealing with, I think we are the lucky ones.