SALT LAKE CITY — I’ve always been a glass half-full kind of guy. I usually look at the sunny side when things are gloomy. I’m optimistic when others are cynical.
So I should be hopeful about sports during these extraordinary times of a global pandemic. But I’m not.
As a sportswriter, one of the questions I get asked most — not that I’m talking to a lot of people these days — is “Will we have a football season this year?”
It’s a great question (notice whenever someone answers “great question,” it means “I don’t know”).
That’s my answer. I really don’t know. Nobody does. But unless things change in a hurry, I have a hard time seeing a return to normalcy in sports for awhile.
Yes, things are looking up. Other countries around the world that were hit hard early with COVID-19, are on the downward slope of the curve and some are getting back to normal. Here in the U.S., many states have flattened the curve thanks to social distancing and people are starting to come out of hibernation, though in some places a little too quickly.
The biggest reason for my pessimism is time. Yeah, the first games aren’t for another four months. But that’s the first week of the season. College officials claim players need around six to eight weeks to get ready for a season, meaning it’s more like two months until players will have to start congregating. The fact that most schools had their spring practice seasons cut drastically short, makes it even more imperative for players to get the proper amount of preparation time. And until college campuses open up, players can’t start practicing.
One of the keys to getting the season up and running is virus testing, which our country is doing a better job of late after lagging behind for several months. We need to know where the virus is, to keep it from spreading.
Some of the worst places for the spread of the virus have been areas where people are in close contact with others, in a limited space for long periods of time. Think cruise ships, care centers and jails.
Football teams of 100 or so players, plus a few dozen coaches, trainers and managers, share small settings in locker rooms for several weeks as well as nose to nose on the field. Can you envision a football practice with the players all 6 feet apart? Not much chance of social distancing there.
Actually, the biggest concern to me will be the games themselves. Can you imagine 46,000 fans at Rice-Eccles Stadium or 60,000 at LaVell Edwards Stadium this fall, packed shoulder to shoulder, cheering on their teams, screaming at officials with spittle spraying fellow fans several rows in front of them? And will fans, after watching the bad news for the past two months and all the scary stories about the coronavirus, even want to venture into a crowded stadium and risk getting sick?
While some folks around the country are starting to be allowed to visit the barber shop or eat out at properly spaced restaurants, it’s hard to picture large groups of athletes working out together day after day and for thousands of people sitting together for three or four hours expelling all those droplets into the air. Many government officials have already said that large gatherings of people, like sporting events, will be the last thing in society to open up.
The sports world can learn some lessons from the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19, which claimed millions of lives around the world.
The flu first hit in the spring of 1918, but after calming down in the summer, returned with a vengeance in the fall. It was bad enough that many schools, including Utah and Utah State, canceled their entire season (BYU didn’t field a team until 1922). However, several of the major schools competed, including all of the Big Ten and Pacific Coast conferences, with some playing as few as two games while others as many as nine. Some games were played against groups of military men (World War I ended late that year) and the only bowl game played was the Rose Bowl with Great Lakes Navy of Illinois defeating the Mare Island Marines of California.
Later that winter, the “World Hockey Series” featuring the Seattle Mets and Montreal Canadiens was canceled after five games and called a tie after several players and fans got sick with the flu and one star player died.
So what if something similar happens this fall?
Say the virus has seemingly gone away in America and everyone is feeling good about football starting up in September. Then what happens if we have a “second wave” as Dr. Anthony Fauci has said we almost certainly will have, later in the fall? Will we have to shut down the football season as quickly as we did with the college and pro basketball seasons on March 12, the day after Rudy Gobert and Tom Hanks were diagnosed with the coronavirus?
That also makes me wonder about the basketball season starting up again in late October or early November when the weather gets colder and the regular flu season starts up again to go along with the possibility of a resurgence of the coronavirus.
Perhaps the smart thing to do would be to take a yearlong break from most sports and get going a year from now.
It’s hard to imagine going that long without sports, but looking at the positive side, once the Spanish flu pandemic subsided in 1919 and World War I was over, sports throttled up again with major league baseball in the summer and football in the fall, and except for a break during World War II sports have been going nonstop ever since.
I hope I’m wrong and we do have a college football season.
But we’re going to have to be patient … very patient.
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April 29, 2020 at 05:59AM
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College football: Will we have a season in 2020? - Deseret News
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