Here’s why it may be time to abort season restarts and call off sports for rest of 2020 | Opinion
It might be time to shut the whole thing down. No more sports in 2020. It is looking more and more like that.
All of our leagues have plans to return this summer to help recoup their financial losses, let’s not kid ourselves. The resumption might be couched as a magnanimous move to entertain America at a time when the nation’s spirits badly need lifting. But it’s about money first.
And that health-of-the-industry priority seems increasingly at odds with the health of teams, players coaches and staffs.
Sports’ grand return is already fraying. You can feel it. You can see it collapsing by degrees, this ambitious plan. It is a giant wobbling on balsa wood legs as it steps into a treacherous unknown.
July now. The month when everything is supposed to resume. When MLB, the NBA, NHL and MLS all reassemble toward restarting their seasons. When NFL and college football players report and start to prepare for their seasons.
U.S. pandemic expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday: “Clearly we are not in total control right now. We’re going in the wrong direction.”
And sports wants to step in that? Do we believe it? Do we really think sports will start back up, let alone finish their 2020 schedules, without being swallowed by a worsening pandemic and made to abort the restart?
The uneasy feeling grows palpably: That leagues and teams should put the safety of their people first and not expect them to place themselves at risk, any risk, for the sake of revenue.
This is about about money, in real life as in sports.
In real life we see too many states across America egregiously reopening too soon, putting economy over lives even as the reopening has directly (and oh so predictably) led to a spike in coronavirus/COVID-19 cases, and deaths.
Should sports really be following that same dangerous path?
In real life we see so many science-deniers and crackpots and those who see refusing to social distance or wear a protective mask as some sort of misguided statement of freedom that the virus is nowhere contained, and experts say, only worsening.
“We’re all in this together!” goes the hopeful mantra. If only.
The way too many of us ignorantly or defiantly not in this fight are why we see this pandemic untamed as sports endeavors to return.
Global deaths have surpassed 500,000 with the U.S. count nearing 127,000 — and with Florida, where so much of sports is reconvening, a particular hotpot.
Just this week the World Health Organization’s chief on COVID-19 warned, “The worst is yet to come.”
The U.S. expert Dr. Fauci warns that new coronavirus cases could more than double to 100,000 per day if so many Americans continue to congregate in large crowds, ignore social distancing guidelines and refuse to wear masks despite mandates.
Did you see that a country music artist named Chase Rice held a concert in Tennessee the other day with a full crowd jammed tight and not a mask in sight? Repulsive. Things like that are exactly why the coronavirus spikes and openings have to be restricted again and the climate for sports’ return remains so dicey.
Our collective resolve as a nation has proved stunningly weak, with so many of us sacrificing diligently for the greater good while so many others selfishly and flagrantly do the opposite, perhaps counting on a vaccine that doesn’t exist yet.
It is no wonder we are beginning to see athletes opting out of their sports’ return plan amid this mess.
Five NBA players and four MLB players already have opted out, including Avery Bradley of the Los Angeles Lakers and Ryan Zimmerman of the Washington Nationals. Does anyone doubt the list will grow longer as reporting dates near?
The number of athletes who have tested positive, pro and college, has grown too long to list. Does anyone doubt there will be more?
Bradley: “At a time like this, I can’t imagine making any decision that might put my family’s health and well-being at even the slightest risk?
Zimmerman: “Three young children including a newborn, and a mother at high risk — I have decided not to participate in the 2020 season.”
Blame them? I would sooner applaud them.
And we are talking only about the health aspect here related to the pandemic. In addition to safety concerns there are the optics. The look of playing games amid a rising death toll and record unemployment. The look of playing games amid the national protests for social justice sparked by the George Floyd killing.
From a health standpoint the NBA and MLS planned restarts at least are restricting themselves to a walled-off bubble in Orlando, while the NHL will play out of two hub cities.. None will allow fans, of course. Even with that, with every precaution and frequent testing, there is inherent risk.
Some NBA teams already have closed their arenas to players out of precaution. Toronto Raptor Fred VanFleet calls the planned restart “terrible timing.”
NBA commissioner Adam Silver admitted this week he is only “pretty confident” the startup will actually happen.
Baseball has put itself at most peril, with plans to play in all 30 ballparks, involving travel, and players returning to their homes or hotels and encountering family who may have been exposed to others. And some home stadiums may allow a limited number of fans if local laws allow. “A recipe for disaster,” as the old saying goes.
Minor-league baseball canceled its entire season Tuesday as the big boys push forward. But to what end?
ESPN baseball expert Buster Olney this week guessed there’s only a 5 percent chance MLB will resume as planned. And making it all the way through a World Series? “Zero percent,” he said.
No sports for the rest of 2020 is something America can live with.
It is what we literally cannot live with -- a continuing uncontrolled pandemic — that had better become the all-in national priority we are not seeing now.
This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 11:50 AM.
