Tag Archives: College football

Grapefruit League, Major League Baseball, Spring Training, Tampa Bay Rays

Yet Another “Storm of the Century” Reignites Great Debate

As parts of Florida and South Carolina continue their recovery efforts following the destructive path of Hurricane Ian, a debate rages about the effects that bigger and more frequent storms will have on everyday life.

No, I am not talking about the debate regarding whether warmer temperatures brought about by climate change means more powerful storms are here to stay. The answer to that is clearly yes, they do. The earth is getting warmer and storms and natural disasters will get bigger and more destructive if nothing is done to reduce the impacts of global warming and climate change. But that is a column for another day.

The debate I am referring to is the debate over the role sport plays in a disaster.

Much of my career in journalism has involved sports. When I wasn’t working as a sports reporter or editor, I served as both an intern and a director in collegiate Sports Information. I have a whole website devoted to my thoughts on baseball. I even have a Master of Science degree in Sport Management. So, needless to say, sports are something that I have a passion for.

Unfortunately, in recent years that passion has started to dim as I grow increasingly tired of the profit at all costs model implored by many sports leagues.

As some readers may recall, the issue of greed over player and spectator health is something that I wrote extensively about during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Time and time again, examples arise where the need to host a sporting event seems to win out over common sense and decency in reading the room.

After delaying the game twice as Hurricane Ian approached, the University of Central Florida hosted SMU this evening while residents of nearby neighborhoods continued their lengthy recovery from storm related flooding and other damage.
Photo R. Anderson

Tonight, my undergraduate alma mater the University of Central Florida hosts Southern Methodist University in a football game that was first slated to be played on Saturday but was rescheduled twice due to Ian.

Likewise, one of my graduate alma maters, the University of Florida, played a rescheduled game of their own on Sunday against Eastern Washington.

While both the UF and UCF stadiums did not suffer major damage, I have no doubt that the games would have been played somewhere even if the stadiums had been destroyed by Ian’s wrath. After all, the show must go on to keep the millions of dollars of revenue flowing.

While UCF’s stadium was declared ready to play, many of the neighborhoods surrounding campus, including my aunt and uncle’s neighborhood, were still dealing with the aftermath of flooding. In many cases, it will take days for the water in some neighborhoods to recede since there is so much water it literally has nowhere to go.

This brings up the debate of whether it is wise to encourage thousands of people to drive to an area that is still engaged in storm cleanup mode just to watch a football game.

Were I still working in a collegiate Sports Information Office and faced with a to play, or not to play, decision, I would be one of the few, if only people, saying that the optics of playing a game while so many people were suffering were not good.

Classes at the University of Florida and other schools in Florida were cancelled ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Ian. As a result, the Gators game in the Swamp against Eastern Washington slipped from Saturday to Sunday.
Photo R. Anderson

Speaking of optics, Florida State University gave away up to for tickets per family to in-state hurricane evacuees for their game against Wake Forest Saturday.

In making the announcement, FSU’s assistant athletic director of ticket operations and service told a local reporter that part of the motivation behind the giveaway for evacuees was to “give them a good experience at a time when they are already experiencing a lot of loss and sadness.”

While I like to think that it was meant as a gesture of goodwill, my sports marketing brain thinks that FSU athletics just wanted to try to make the stadium look less empty on TV; since at the time the ticket giveaway was announced around 13,000 tickets remained unsold.

When I was growing up in Florida, hurricanes meant some wind and some rain, but rarely did they mean widespread flooding that lasted for days. Following Hurricane Andrew in 1992, building codes were enhanced to provide better protection against the wind.

Unlike in Texas, where they seem to build their house out of sticks and straw, most modern homes in Florida are constructed using cinder blocks with straps tying the roof to the walls.

Of course, building a structure to survive Category 5 winds does nothing to protect it when the agent of destruction is multiple feet of water brought about by storm surge and freshwater flooding from torrential amounts of rain.

While the climate change deniers can stick their heads in the sand and scream, “fake storm” all they want, recent years have shown that today’s hurricanes are different from our grandparents’ storms. Ignoring them is not going to make them go away.

Hurricane Ian is expected to be declared the biggest natural disaster in Florida history. That is saying quite a lot, since there have been many disastrous storms to hit the Sunshine State.

As Hurricane Ian trained its wrath on the southwest coast of Florida, one of my initial thoughts was, “oh no, there are so many ballparks in the path of the storm I hope they survive.”

Charlotte Sports Park, the Spring Training home of the Tampa Bay Rays is just one of the many ballparks that were in the cross hairs of Hurricane Ian.
Photo R. Anderson

While it is certainly true that a bulk of the Grapefruit League Spring Training ballparks stretch from Clearwater to Fort Myers, I am somewhat ashamed that my first thought of seeing the storm heading towards the west coast of Florida was I hope the ballparks make it.

My grandparents used to live on Longboat Key and Bradenton Beach. I would hope that if they were still alive, my reaction to the approaching storm would have been concern for their safety and not for the safety of some empty ballparks.

At the time of this writing, I am not aware of any damage to the ballparks along the path of the storm. However, I am confident that if any of the ballparks were damaged, the teams and cities impacted will move heaven and earth to ensure that they are up and running come February. After all, the games must go on.

That is part of my growing struggle with the sport business. Even when Spring Training rolls around in four months, many of the people who work in those ballparks from the ticket takers to the concession stand workers likely will still be dealing with some impacts from Hurricane Ian.

While I would hope that the Major League Baseball teams that employ those seasonal workers will have some sort of assistance plan in place, I can see a scenario where impacted workers are left to fend for themselves.

Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, a great deal was made about the calming effect the return of baseball had on the country. President George W. Bush famously went to Yankee Stadium and threw out the first pitch declaring that it was okay to play ball while the nation was still in mourning.

I don’t dispute the fact that sports can be a good diversion.

My issue is when the diversion becomes the main focus and other issues are ignored.

To be fair, most of the country was not impacted by Hurricane Ian so people might think, “why should they miss out on getting to watch sports, if their homes didn’t blow away or flood?”

That sort of narrow minded approach is part of the problem that seems ripe to tear society apart.

There will be other “Storms of the Century” in the coming years. Of that, I am sure.

What I am not as sure about is whether people will take the necessary steps to be better prepared and try to lessen the impacts, or if they will just continue to whine about the inconvenience of having their sporting event delayed by a few days.

There are no easy answers. The more time I spend working in sports, the more disenchanted I become with the priorities some leagues seem to have of putting profits over people.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am off to reread some chapters on sports ethics.

Copyright 2022 R. Anderson

media

College Football set to Kick off during a COVID-19 Pandemic for Second Straight Year

It has been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I used that line in a column last September to describe the absurdity of trying to play football during a global COVID-19 pandemic.

When I wrote those words, and the 1,000 plus other words in that column, I never dreamed that a year later we would be basically back in the same spot.

In 2021, just as in 2020, we are still dealing with raging COVID-19 outbreaks. People are still denying science. Governors are still saying vaccine and masks mandates infringe on one’s freedom to spread the virus to others. Plus, so much more bologna that I really thought we would be done with by now.

Instead of using last year as a rallying cry to do everything we could to send COVID-19 packing, here we are with an even more potent variant of COVID-19, and even less restrictions on activities that could help slow the spread of the disease.

The horse is definitely out of the barn when it comes to COVID-19 denialism. Speaking of horses, some people now would rather take a horse deworming medication, that does nothing to prevent or treat COVID-19, instead of taking a fully approved vaccine that can prevent infection, hospitalization and death in most cases. I guess horse dewormer is the 2021 version of 2020’s advice from a fan of red trucker hats to ingest bleach like a cleaning.

The fact that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) once again had to send a common sense tweet out reminding people not to take horse medicine a year after tweeting not to ingest bleach shows just how out of touch from reality some parts of society are.
Graphic R. Anderson

The fact that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) once again had to send a common sense tweet out reminding people not to take horse medicine a year after tweeting not to ingest bleach shows just how out of touch from reality some parts of society are.

I really wonder what type of person decides that they would rather get a horse paste at the local feed store instead of rolling up their sleeve and getting a vaccine.

I picture the conversation going something like this:

Chet: Hey Bob, did you see that anonymous post on Facebook the other day about the benefits of horse deworming cream to fight that fake virus?

Bob: I did. I am giving it a try since I can’t seem to shine this light down my throat like a cleaning. I’m so glad we have random posts on Facebook from people with zero medical training to give us the truth, compared to those scientists who spent years studying infectious diseases and are dedicated to keeping people safe.

Chet: Agreed, see you at the completely full football stadium on Saturday for the mask burning. I will save you some nachos.

And scene.

Shame on me for giving certain segments of society more credit than they deserve. I know I should know better, but sometimes I just cannot help myself. I want to believe that society can improve, instead of just racing like lemmings towards the cliff lowering the bar as they go.

We really are trying our best to make the world outlined in the movie Idiocracy become reality.

In the movie Idiocracy an American soldier who is accidentally frozen for 500 years as part of a military experiment wakes up in a dystopian world where society has forgotten the ideals of intellectual curiosity, social responsibility, justice, and human rights and instead society has embraced commercialism and instant gratification. Sound familiar? One need only watch the news for a few hours to see that in many ways we are well on our way to bringing that vision of society lampooned in the movie to life.

I have written about Idiocracy a few times before, but for anyone unfamiliar with the plot of the 2006 Mike Judge movie, it goes something like this.

An American soldier who is accidentally frozen for 500 years as part of a military experiment wakes up in a dystopian world where society has forgotten the ideals of intellectual curiosity, social responsibility, justice, and human rights, and instead society has embraced commercialism and instant gratification.

Sound familiar? One need only watch the news for a few hours to see that in many ways we are well on our way to bringing that vision of society lampooned in the movie to life.

When a disruption in a state’s power supply caused by inept governmental leadership triggers a worldwide plastic wrap shortage, one has to wonder just how many degrees of Kevin Bacon we are from totally collapsing as a society.

Especially when that state that sounds like “Texas” focuses more on passing executive orders and bills to suppress masks and voting rights then actually trying to fix the flawed power grid before the next cold snap, or heat wave, once again leaves thousands of people without electricity in a state that literally pumps the natural gas out of the ground that powers many of the electric plants.

But I shall rant about the failings of the “do it on our own star state” at a later date, today my attention is focused on the gridiron as college football season kicks off this week.

As noted time and time again, I enjoy college football. Aside from being a long-time fan of the game, during my undergraduate studies I interned in a college Sports Information Office and spent many a Saturday in the press box of college football games.

Additionally, I worked for five years with a committee that was responsible for hosting three college bowl games a year.

While I enjoy college football, I do not enjoy it to the point where I want to see stadiums full of people cheering in the middle of a pandemic. I also really have zero desire to attend a watch party for a college football game in the middle of a pandemic.
Photo R. Anderson

While I enjoy college football, I do not enjoy it to the point where I want to see stadiums full of people cheering in the middle of a pandemic.

I also really have zero desire to attend a watch party for a college football game in the middle of a pandemic.

Sadly, an organization I volunteer with does not share my belief that now is not the time for college watch parties and has basically said, “go have your parties, and if you have high transmission of COIVD-19 where you live, have the watch party outside.”

Because yeah, having people shouting at a football game and stuffing their faces full of nachos and other salty snacks is a great idea in the middle of a pandemic.

Navigating the latest surge of COVID-19 boils down in many ways to an individual’s risk versus reward threshold. While vaccinated people certainly can be riskier in theory compared to unvaccinated people, the simple fact remains that even vaccinated people can get breakthrough cases.

This brings me to my Dirty Harry approach to navigating COVID-19. Whenever I am thinking of going to an event, I squint really hard while gritting my teeth and recite the following mantra to myself to determine my willingness to participate in said event.

“Ryan (That’s what I call myself in my head), I know what you’re thinking. ‘Is the entire group vaccinated or not’? Well to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I kind of lost track of everyone’s vaccination status, and because this is an anti-science state, I am likely to get shot if I ask the wrong person to see a vaccine card. But being that we are talking about the Delta variant, the most contagious COVID-19 variant in the world, that is putting more people in the hospital than any other variant combined, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well do ya, punk?”

Once I have weighed the pros and cons of an event I react accordingly.

Getting on an airplane full of masked people so I can visit family in Florida is an activity I can get behind on the Dirty Harry do I feel lucky scale.

Watching college football in person either in a stadium, or at a sports bar, just does not give me a reward that is greater than the risk. Or in Dirty Harry speak, it does not make my day.

More power to those who want to partake in such things, but at the end of the day college football is not essential to society. Furthermore, if large crowds attending games is straining the health care systems in those mostly red football loving states, then that is a huge problem.

After going fan free during the 2020 College football season, ESPN’s College Gameday kicked off the 2021 season with crowds reminiscent of the before times proving that profit trumps pandemic in the eyes of some despite more people being hospitalized from the Delta variant of COVID-19.
Photo R. Anderson

In several states healthcare workers are walking away from their jobs in record numbers citing burnout, as well as not wanting to continue to risk their lives to take care of an unvaccinated population that thumbs their nose at science.

Other states are so full of COVID-19 patients in their ICU departments that there is no room for patients who have non-COVID emergencies requiring hospitalization.

It does not help the cause when governors ban masks mandates and instead just say that they will import more healthcare workers into the state to handle the surge within the hospitals.

That would be like someone in a sinking boat continuing to bail out water with a bucket with a hole in it instead of getting on the Coast Guard cutter that came to save them while saying, “Nope, I can’t have the federal government infringing on my freedom to stay on this sinking boat. You can keep your shiny government funded rescue craft. I’d rather just keep bailing here by myself.”

Unfortunately, that seems to be the mantra some governors are urging their citizens to follow. Don’t wear a mask, don’t get a vaccine if you feel it infringes on your rights, and if you get sick just take some gene therapy that is only available in short supply.

Or, one can always take that aforementioned horse deworming cream of course. Shudder.

The anti-mandate politicians are quick to say, “Don’t worry if your actions cause kids who are too young to get vaccinated to get sick. They would rather die free then live in a mask anyway.”

Of course, these are the same politicians who so famously said during the power grid failure that “many Texans would rather freeze to death then count on other states for their power,” or heaven forbid pay more for electricity.

I am sure there is a conspiracy theory out there somewhere in the dark corners of social media amongst the posts about the medicinal properties of horse paste that says that getting power from a blue state will either make you turn blue, or brainwash you into turning in your guns.

Seriously, are there massive radon gas leaks somewhere that are causing so many people to lose touch with common sense and realty?

The Roman emperor Nero is credited with playing the fiddle and watching Rome burn around him. I suppose the modern-day equivalent would be people choosing to watch college football, or crowd into other spaces mask-less and unvaccinated while COVID-19 burns around them.

With comparisons to Nero fiddling as Rome burned around him, college marching bands may want to add a violin section to their halftime show to portray the reality of playing football in the middle of a global pandemic.
Photo R. Anderson

I guess more college marching bands should add violins to their ranks and start playing the “Devil went down to Georgia” during halftime like the Florida State Seminoles Marching Chiefs did years ago.

Idiocracy predicated what the future would look like in 500 years. At the current rate we likely won’t have to wait that long until society totally devolves. I guess that is good in a morbid way, since at the rate we are destroying the planet there is no guarantee that the earth will even be around in 500 years.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think it is time for another screening of Idiocracy.

Copyright 2021 R. Anderson

Major League Baseball

Dinosaurs can Teach Us a Lot About Sports and Pandemic Response

Like many other kids, when I was growing up, I loved dinosaurs.

Show me a picture of a dinosaur and I could tell you the name of the species in question, as well as whether it was a plant loving herbivore, or a meat loving carnivore.

Although my favorite dinosaurs were the Stegosaurus and the Triceratops, I celebrated the entire catalog when it came to the world of dinosaurs.

Although my favorite dinosaurs were the Stegosaurus and the Triceratops, I celebrated the entire catalog when it came to the world of dinosaurs.
Photo R. Anderson

In turns out that my fascination with dinosaurs was not limited to my youth.

I recently completed an online course called Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology, that was offered by the University of Alberta. If the course taught me anything, it is that I still like dinosaurs as much as I did growing up.

It also taught me that a lot has changed in dino science since I was a kid.

So, why do I bring up dinosaurs you may ask?

As we all know, dinosaurs are no longer with us. While scientists may argue about the specifics of how it happened, they all agree that except for fantasies portrayed in cinematic parks of a Jurassic nature, dinosaurs are very much extinct in this day and age.

That got me thinking about the ongoing debates related to the wisdom of playing sports in the middle of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

As we all know, dinosaurs are no longer with us. While scientists may argue about the specifics of how it happened, they all agree that except for fantasies portrayed in cinematic parks of a Jurassic nature, dinosaurs are very much extinct in this day and age.
Photo R. Anderson

Thankfully, we are likely to have a vaccine, therapeutic treatments, or at the worst herd immunity against COVID-19 before things would reach an extinction event level scenario.

However, the fact remains some people are ignoring the virus, and trying to act as if there isn’t a huge asteroid heading towards them.

Major League Baseball (MLB) ignored the science, and is paying the price through player and staff outbreaks in their non bubble approach to the season. Recently, it was noted that MLB may look into a modified bubble approach for the postseason.

The NHL and NBA are just two of the leagues that have shown bubbles work. The MLB and the rest of society could learn a lot from their example.

Of course, despite the growing evidence, and the growing COVID-19 outbreak, some sports are appearing to be as dense as a dinosaurs armor plating when it comes to evolving their thought process on the reality of the disease.

Consider the world of college football as the next battleground in the “to play or not to play” debate. While some college football conferences are canceling their fall seasons, there are others that are either waiting until the last possible minute to cancel, or are somewhat convinced that a miracle will occur and the heavens will open up to allow them to play football.

Of course, despite the growing evidence, and the growing COVID-19 outbreak, some sports are appearing to be as dense as a dinosaurs armor plating when it comes to evolving their thought process on the reality of the disease.
Photo R. Anderson

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy football. I especially enjoy college football.

As mentioned previously, one of my favorite things to do on Saturdays in the fall is to get up and watch College GameDay followed by watching football games until late into the night.

The idea of a fall without football is certainly a tough thing for me to consider, but as the late Wilfred Brimley would say when he was selling oatmeal on TV, canceling college football is “the right thing to do.”

To be clear, football, even limited conference schedule only football, has no business being played in the middle of a global pandemic.

Of course, since college football is more business than educational endeavor, that is exactly the argument being made for why college football must be played.

Put bluntly, the argument for why some schools are determined to play is because there is too much money involved to just walk away.

Lost in all of the noise about needing to play college football in order to make all of that sweet, sweet cash, is the fact that college athletes are not paid. Also, college athletes do not have the same protections as professional athletes when it comes to negotiating their rights to opt out of the season without penalty.

Talk about a prehistoric concept.

I spent several years of my career working in collegiate sports information offices. As such, I have a bit of an idea of the inner workings of a college athletic department.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began to surge like a tidal wave heading towards an unsuspecting beach, my first thought was there is no way that any college athletics program will want to risk the lives of their students just to make a few bucks.

Yes, there are college athletes who want to play football. However, there are also athletes who are worried that playing football this season will result in long-term health effects, or even death. I figured the adults in the room would choose athlete safety over profit.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Although some conferences have done the right thing and delayed and/or cancelled their seasons, The Big 12 and Southeastern Conferences (SEC) are promoting an “ignore the rising death count, we are here to play ball” approach.

It is likely not a coincidence that the Big 12 and SEC schools are mostly located in cities and states that are treating COVID-19 like a hoax. Many people in those areas are refusing to wear masks, or social distance and are promoting wild conspiracy theories that might even make the writers of the X-Files say, “That’s some crazy stuff right there.”

Perhaps if the athletic departments at those schools left their multimillion dollar facilities and walked to the science departments on the other side of campus, they might get a better idea of why playing football in the middle of COVID-19 is not really a good idea.

The sad thing is, that if everyone had just buckled down in March and not prematurely reopened for Memorial Day the spread of COVID-19 would likely be contained to a level where playing college sports could be handled safely.

Perhaps if the athletic departments at those schools left their multimillion dollar facilities and walked to the science departments on the other side of campus, they might get a better idea of why playing football in the middle of COVID-19 is not really a good idea.
Photo R. Anderson

Of course, that is not what happened, and so we are worse off now than we were back in March.

Going back to our dinosaur example, some scientists have hypothesized that had the asteroid that hit near the Yucatan Peninsula, resulting in the death of 75 percent of the earth’s species, hit almost anywhere else on the planet the dinosaurs likely would have survived.

While we can’t bring back the dinosaurs, it isn’t too late to get a handle on containing COVID-19. That is where the focus should be. We should not be worrying about what to do on Saturdays if there is no college football to watch.

The Chicxulub asteroid didn’t stop to ask the dinosaurs what they ate. It wiped out both the herbivores, and the carnivores with equal reckless abandon.

Likewise, COVID-19 attacks the people in blue states, as well as the people in red states.

Or, to put it in college football terms, COIVD-19 doesn’t care if you want the Tide to roll, or if you think that it is time for someone else to build a dynasty on the gridiron.

There will be a time to play college spots again, but first we really should get the raging wildfire under control. That should be something that even the most bitter of college rivals can agree on.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am off to see if I can extract some DNA from this mosquito I found in a block of amber.

Copyright 2020 R. Anderson

Major League Baseball

COVID-19 puts the Sports World in an Extended Timeout

The world of professional baseball has been dark since March. Discussions are underway to return players to the ballparks in a shortened, fan-free season. Photo R. Anderson

Thanks to the arrival of the COVID-19 virus, for many people right now it feels like up is down, and down is up. The virus has also introduced new terms like, social distancing and contact tracing into our vocabularies. As part of its destructive path into everyday life COVID-19 has caused the world of sports to grind to a halt as player and fan safety was given the proper level of respect.

The COVID-19 outbreak tested leagues in a way that many sports had never experienced. Social distancing requirements, as well as limits on crowd size, led to the cancellations of the XFL, NBA, NHL and almost all other sports leagues. On April 10, 2020 the XFL announced it had suspended operations indefinitely and laid off all league employees due in part to financial losses as a result of COVID-19.

The Olympic Summer Games in Tokyo were delayed by at least a year. All NCAA spring sports tournaments, including the Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments were cancelled. Major League Baseball ended Spring Training early, and delayed the start of the season. The leagues that continued to hold competitions did so without fans in attendance as they tried to balance social responsibility with the public’s appetite for live sports.

With most major sports leagues shutdown due to COVID-19, sports fans looked for any port in the storm to quench their thirst for live competition. The American Cornhole League provided many fans with just such an outlet.
Photo R. Anderson

Before going any further, it is important to note that shutting down mass gatherings, like sporting events, was the right call.

One need only look at the amount of cases that spread out from a convention in Boston to know how quickly the virus can spread to know that mass gatherings are simply not prudent at this juncture. Even with social distancing, the number of cases, and the number of fatalities continue to rise. Were sports allowed to continue in full stadiums and arenas, there is little doubt that the case and death count would be much higher.

It should also be said that the inconvenience of not having live sports to watch is trivial compared to the real effects of COVID-19 that many people are facing across the world through losses of jobs and in extreme cases losses of loved ones.

Although the major sporting leagues have been shutdown for nearly two months, there are rumblings building to resume sports, albeit in empty stadiums without fans. NASCAR, which kept fans entertained through simulated races, is set to resume racing in empty tracks on May 17, 2020. Five years after the first game in Major League Baseball history was played in Baltimore without fans, MLB is negotiating with the player’s union to try to gain approval to host a truncated 82 game season in empty ballparks starting in July.

NASCAR is set to resume racing without fans in attendance on May 17, 2020. Time will tell whether the fans return for the Daytona 500 in February at Daytona International Speedway.
Photo R. Anderson

All of these efforts to resume sports without fans show a desire for the governing bodies of the respected sports to explore any and all means for the show to go on. This effort to resume is driven in large part so the leagues can recoup some sort of financial payday.

While a return to live sports on television, even sports without fans, would be welcomed by many, one has to ask whether leagues risk diminishing the product by forcing reduced schedules on fans and trying to call it a full season. Should a World Series Champion that only played an 82-game regular season be considered as talented as teams of the past who prevailed over the course of a season that was twice as long?

Additionally, as part of any discussion on the resumption of live sports one must also ask whether players are being put at undue risk by being asked to travel from city to city, and potential virus hot spot to hot spot, just so the show can go on in some form or fashion.

To be clear, like most sports fans, I miss being able to unwind at the end of the day by watching a game on television. However, I am not sure that I miss live sports enough that I am willing to support putting my favorite athletes potentially at risk of catching, or spreading, a virus that currently has no cure just so they can bring me a few hours of entertainment.

As professional sports look at ways to resume during the era of COVID-19 one has to wonder how exactly a football huddle with social distancing would look.
Photo R. Anderson

Aside from needing to address player safety as part of any path to resumed competition, leagues must also consider that airing games without fans leagues may hasten the trend of people choosing to watch games from the comfort of home versus battling thousands of people to get to a seat so far from the field that they are basically watching the game on the big screen anyway. Sure, the made for TV sports are better with screaming fans, but there is something to be said for watching at home where the snacks and the bathrooms are both a lot easier to get to.

With NASCAR and MLB looking to get their seasons going, the eyes of the world of sports turn their focus to football. Even if one accepts the prospect of empty football stadiums, it is hard to fathom how players could be in the trenches on the gridiron and not risk exposure to COVID-19.

Exactly how does one huddle with six-feet of separation? Even a scenario where players are wearing masks does not seem feasible. It is hard to think that a wide receiver can run full speed down the sideline wearing a N-95 mask under his face mask. The only possible solution would be to equip all player helmets with a clear shield that covers their mouth and nose, but even that is a stretch.

College Football is one of the sports on the bubble for a return based on a NCAA position on the need for students to be on campus before sports can resume.
Photo R. Anderson

College sports face their own hurdles for resuming in the fall. The NCAA has said that sports will not resume unless on campus classes have also resumed. The implication being that if the college is not deemed safe enough for students to be on, then the athletes should not be expected to have to play there.

There is too much money involved in college football to think that a work around of some sort will not be found to play games if the COVID-19 virus is still running rampant across the country come August. The topic of College Bowl Games and the College Football Playoffs is another issue that is bound to get a lot of attention in the coming months based on the millions of dollars at stake.

It is entirely possible that the sports landscape will never return to the levels that it was at before the world of sports was shut down by COVID-19. By adopting an attitude that everyone is in this together, those most impacted by the global timeout in sport can better weather the storm. It is crucial to keep in mind that the current situation is also only temporary.

Perhaps James Earl Jones’ character Terence Mann in the movie Field of Dreams said it best when he said “People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and that could be again. Oh…people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.”

Yes, baseball and other sports will resume at some point, and people will indeed come. How many people are allowed to come over the next few years based on social distancing remains to be seen.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some masked competitive cornhole to watch on the Ocho followed by some lawnmower racing.

Copyright 2020 R. Anderson

 

Major League Baseball

Ready or Not, Football is Here

Last night was the official kickoff of the College Football season, and the final night of the NFL preseason.

No longer content to have all of their games air on Saturdays, the expanding television landscape for college football now gives fans games Thursday through Saturday.

The NFL gives viewers live game action on Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays.

So for roughly the next five months there are only two days out of the week where live football games are not being broadcast somewhere.

And I am sure on those dark Tuesdays and Wednesdays there will be a replay of a game somewhere on the dial meaning that a fan could watch a football game every night of the week.

Steve Spurrier's South Carolina Gamecocks kicked off the College football season last night with a game against North Carolina proving that Thursday night college football is here to stay. Photo R. Anderson
Steve Spurrier’s South Carolina Gamecocks kicked off the College football season last night with a game against North Carolina proving that Thursday night College Football is here to stay.
Photo R. Anderson

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy football but do I think that there needs to be five days a week of live games? Not really.

I think keeping the games Saturday through Monday would be a good mix but I know that I am most likely in the minority with that opinion.

While I know that there have been many weeks where I have watched a baseball game or two every night of the week that is different from wall to wall football.

For starters, while starting pitchers take four days off between starts the rest of the players on a baseball team can usually play night after night without the grind getting to them.

While football players would not play in a game on consecutive nights the staggering of game nights leads to scenarios where the time between games is not equal.

Whereas in the past players would have a full week to rest and take care of injuries between games, the new scheduling in college and professional football creates scenarios where a team could play games with 2-3 less days to recover.

While it is too soon to tell if this will lead to more injuries with players, it certainly stands to reason that players need as much time as possible between games to stay healthy due to the increased risk of injury in football compared to baseball.

And with college games now being played on “school nights” the NCAA is encouraging their athletes to stay out late which could impact their studies.

I almost typed that with a straight face. The NCAA has shown in recent years that the almighty dollar seems to take a front seat while student interests and ensuring academic accountability for football players seems to be lacking at times.

And one need only look at the situation with that sophomore quarterback in College Station, TX ole Johnny what’s his name to know that the NCAA is limited in its enforcement of rule violations.

Of course this conflict between class and football can be easily solved as one player for LSU accomplished by enrolling in a single online class for the fall semester thus ensuring that school work will in no way impede his football work.

In addition to competing with baseball on the airwaves for the next eight weeks or so, this is also the time of year when baseball will take a back seat on many of the sports pages and talk shows as the almighty pigskin season has arrived.

Right when baseball teams are ramping up their efforts for a run to the playoffs the gladiators of the gridiron have arrived to help ease the suffering fans have felt for the seven months without football.

I guess baseball fans are lucky in that we have seven months of season and only five months of off season to get through. I just wish that baseball coverage did not take a backseat each year as the season ramps up to the World Series.

Each year there will be those who say the baseball season is too long and they should hold the World Series in August to finish before football season starts. I have never agreed with that assessment.

Given the choice I would have baseball go year round since I enjoy watching the games and would certainly love a few extra months to head out to the Ballpark.

The potential for snow covered Ballparks is one of many things preventing year-round baseball. Thankfully football fills the five baseball free months of the year. Photo R. Anderson
The potential for snow covered Ballparks is one of many things preventing year-round baseball. Thankfully football fills the five baseball free months of the year.
Photo R. Anderson

Of course it is not realistic to have baseball go year round since even games in April and May have the chance to get snowed out. I can only imagine the risk of snowed out games in open air stadiums in the north during December and January.

Plus, all of those Ballparks with pools and other water features in them would turn to ice.

Although having the umpire call time so a snow plow can clear the field might be fun to watch.

So, since the logistics just do not support year round baseball, I guess it is good that we have football to keep us occupied during those dark months between the end of the World Series and the time that players report to Florida and Arizona for Spring Training.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am off to see how far back the box scores from last night got buried on the sports page to make room for the wall to wall football coverage.

Copyright 2013 R. Anderson