Quaranteams: Social Distancing For the Sports Fan

Has it happened to you yet? Have you had that absent-minded moment where you forget that sports are pretty much cancelled for the foreseeable future? It happened to me often in the first few days of quarantine. I habitually checked the ESPN app to check scores that weren’t there. Every site still shows the games that were initially scheduled with the word “postponed” in the place that the start time and scores would normally go.

Everybody is suffering in the midst of the new coronavirus pandemic, but I’m sure that sports fans are suffering a different kind of pain. Sports, for myself and many others, is our release. We can lose ourselves in meaningless games, players, and stats for a few hours and just kind of forget about everything else.

Now that this outlet is gone, where do we turn? People have found shameful refuge in classic games, 2k matches, and all-time debates. But it’s just not the same. ESPN has been kind enough to move up their Chicago Bulls documentary nearly two months to give fans something new to watch as we’re forced to stay home.

The 2020 Olympics in Tokyo have been postponed until Summer 2021 due to the COVID-19 outbreak

This has everyone itching to know when the social distancing will end so that we can achieve some normalcy and get our sports back. Unfortunately, things aren’t looking good. The NCAA basketball tournament was completely cancelled. The NBA and NHL were halted in their stretch runs right before the playoffs. The MLB didn’t even get a chance to begin their regular season.

Football appears to be harmed the least by this situation to date, but the amount of solace they can take leads back to the heart of this situation. How do we approach normal? Especially in a profession like theirs that requires significant proximity and contact. The next question for me is how long until people are comfortable enough to gather in large crowds to watch sports or participate in them?

That could really affect the start of training camp in the summer for both the pros and the college kids. Losing basketball and baseball is something we can deal with, as they play a large number of games each season. Just the thought of losing football is the thing that I feel could push sports watchers to insanity. The sport comes to define weekends in the fall and early winter when weather is getting worse, and frankly, we need that to get through the week sometimes.

So here's hoping that an end to COVID-19 arrives sooner rather than later. We just want our sports back :(