Sports’ return offers America relief, a small respite. And we have never needed it more | Opinion
So Drew Brees apologizes Thursday morning, like you knew he would, after saying the wrong thing at the spectacularly wrong time the day before.
His words hit like one of those flashbang grenades police used to disperse demonstrators in Washington, D.C.
Brees Wednesday: “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America” — when asked if he would support players kneeling as the national anthem played when NFL games resume.
Predictable outcry ensues because everything that Colin Kaepernick started is about a demand for social social justice and against the very police brutality we saw again last week with the heinous killing of George Floyd that has spurred demonstrations nationwide.
Kaepernick has made very clear, repeatedly and expressly, that the gesture is not against the flag or the military. LeBron James led the backlash over Brees saying what he did, when he did. Brees’ own Saints teammate, Malcolm Jenkins, told his quarterback to “shut the [bleep] up.”
Brees Thursday morning, in a lengthy Instagram mea culpa: “I made comments that were insensitive and completely missed the mark on the issues we are facing right now as a country.”
Those issues have everyone so on edge that what Brees said got magnified and heard as inflammatory. They made people angry. Except the people who agree with that sentiment, and will never feel right about kneeling during the an them — even as Floyd’s death and national protests are the very reason for the cause.
Man, do we need our games back!
Sports, please. Please.
A diversion. A respite. A little minute to feel good.
Sports does not have the power to heal us as a nation, or to magically return us to normalcy. But they can help. Even as a symbol, they can play their part.
I have had internal conversations with myself the past three months over the place of sports in society. Existential debates, almost.
The frivolity of watching basketball games (as if they were actually important) when the growing coronavirus/COVID-19 U.S. death toll sits at around 110,000.
The odd notion that having live sports on TV again might mitigate the desperation of those among a record American unemployment rate in an economy just now beginning to inch out of its shutdown.
The idea of cheering for our teams again when so many thousands are in the streets, chanting for justice.
For me there is something close to guilt attached to diving back into sports fan mode or writing about games as if they were important, right now, amid all of the grave challenges weighing on our country.,
Except they are important, right now. That realization comes to me not from rational thought but from the heart, where emotion lives.
For us, right now, sports can be the hand of consolation on your shoulder after the tears. The gesture that seems to say, “It’s going to be alright.”
It’s OK to cheer, right now. Because we need to.
The resumption of sports this summer has begun to take concrete shape.
NASCAR racing, though without spectators, returns to Homestead-Miami Speedway June 13-14.
The NBA reportedly will restart with a 22-team format, including the Miami Heat, with eight regular-season games for each and then the playoffs — all with no fans, all on a single campus in Orlando. Teams will reassemble there July 31 for a brief training camp; the playoffs will run into October.
Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo, doing their thing again. Soon.
The NHL announced it would resume with 24 teams including the Florida Panthers going directly into the playoffs, a break for the Cats, who would have been off playoff pace had the league resumed its regular season. Training camps will begin mid-July with all games played, sans fans, in two still-unnamed hub cities.
Jonathan Huberdeau and Aleksander Barkov, back on the ice. Soon.
MLS has agreed to return in July with a no-spectators tournament and season in Orlando involving all 26 teams including expansion club Inter Miami, which returned to its practice field Thursday with “voluntary small group training.”
After losing two road games to start its first season before the shutdown, we await Miami’s historic maiden win. Soon.
MLB’s hoped-for July restart is less firm as owners and players bicker over money — not a good look amid record unemployment. As ill-timed and tone deaf as what Drew Brees said.
NFL and college football in the fall is on schedule, for now, but with growing indications games may start with no fans or with the number hugely reduced.
We take what we can get and, for now, that’s actual live games again starting in late July into August.
Not ESPN televising an “all-star Peleton bike ride.” Not a cornhole tournament. Not cardboard-cutout fans at a Korean baseball game.
Rather, the return of sports we know. Teams we love. Players we’ve missed. The cheering we’ve missed. The feeling we’ve missed.
Sports cannot end a pandemic or solve racial injustice, but it can give us a small break, a chance to get lost for a minute and smile.
We need that.
This story was originally published June 4, 2020 at 12:06 PM.
