In 2020, everyone wrote their analyses of COVID-19 and sports. But the truth is that we were flying blind.
No one in charge of the global, multibillion-dollar sports world knew what to do. They gave us hermetically sealed “bubbles” and empty stadiums; tons of rescheduling and breathless updates if a player was even in the vicinity of someone who had a positive test. Basically, once the games restarted in July 2020, without fans in the stands, it was an exercise in fulfilling lucrative television broadcast deals and praying for the best.
Perhaps we need to take an honest look at the mutations and absence of protections and shut it all down.
In 2021, we had a decidedly different narrative. First, after the development of the vaccines, the sports world threw open its doors to fans. The Summer Olympics, after a yearlong delay, geared up for Tokyo. They all acted as if having a vaccine would squash any concerns that we were rushing headlong into a burning building.
Now, even as we see breakthrough cases, mutations that act faster than the vaccine because of global vaccine inequity, and a section of the population that refuses to do its part to curb the virus, the sports world remains committed to the idea of normalcy. It acts as though it can bullishly ram through this idea of “business as usual,” despite all evidence to the contrary.
The NBA not only held a packed NBA Finals, it also celebrated the Milwaukee fans who gathered by the tens of thousands outside of the Bucks’ arena in close contact to watch the game on a massive screen. The Olympics were full steam forward in Tokyo, a highly concentrated city with a very low vaccination rate. Despite all efforts to keep the tens of thousands of visitors on lockdown, the results were predictable: a surge in new cases.
In the NFL, if there is a COVID-19 outbreak on a team, there will be no rescheduling. Instead, a team will be attributed a loss and every player on the squad will lose a game check. If this happens more than once or twice, the entire legitimacy of the season will be in question.
Then there’s college football. We have seen young students, much to the delight of the NCAA’s broadcast partners, gather 100,000 strong, blithely oblivious to their role in keeping the virus alive and spreading.
I get it: Sports are the closest thing to a uniform community activity that many of us have in this country. It’s our collective space and, increasingly, our public square. In a country riven by manufactured divisions of every conceivable type, the playing field is where people can come together.
This is particularly true when we are looking at local, youth, and high school sports. As a youth basketball coach myself, I work with students who are both in poor physical condition from the last year of remote learning and also young people so grateful to be outside; they don’t even mind having to practice in masks.
Athletes and fans alike seem to be gulping up the opportunity to return to spaces where they are less alone: where they can play, cheer, and, if for even just a few hours, forget the world burning outside.
There is only one problem with this entire scenario: Our appetites for sports might also be what’s keeping us sick. Getting the virus under control requires three things from us—vaccinations, masking, and being responsible. Having just attended a Major League baseball game, I can tell you masking and being responsible, at least, were just not happening.
Sports, that elixir of life, is clutching our jerseys and dragging us down to a place where “normalcy” is really a substitute for ruin. Perhaps we need to take an honest look at the mutations and absence of protections and shut it all down. Maybe sports need to be off limits until this country—at a bare minimum—is sufficiently vaccinated. For many, that might be the only incentive that works.
If it were our kid, we’d say, “No sports until you are well.” We need to say the same thing to this country. If 2021 were the year the sports world decided that the show must go on, let’s sincerely hope that 2022 could be a time of sobriety and recovery. This almost certainly will not happen: the financial and personal imperatives are just too strong. But I’m still going to make the case. With our collective health hanging in the balance, let’s just shut it down.