Sports have provided entertainment near and wide for hundreds of years. From baseball to tennis to volleyball, there is almost guaranteed to be a sport suiting nearly every human being. But with the advance of COVID-19, sports have seemingly ceased to exist for the time being.
When the pandemic started, the NBA was the first national sports organization to end its entire season March 11; almost all professional sports organizations within the week did the same after multiple athletes across disciplines tested positive for COVID-19. Playing sports without fans in the arenas was the initial plan for some, but shortly after that idea was proposed, sports went on full hiatus.
Currently, there is no confirmed plan for what will happen when sports resume, nor has anything been said on how this will affect schedules. Multiple questions still remain: Will sports seasons be shorter and the offseason stay the same? If the regular season stays the same, will the offseason be shorter? The only events that have made formal announcements about future dates are the Olympics and the Euros, which have both been postponed until 2021.
The NCAA’s March Madness tournament was the first of many events to officially be cancelled, and sophomore Collin Blackburn said he was not happy when he heard the news.
“I was sad,” Blackburn said. “I look forward to March Madness especially every year, and when it got cancelled, I was really upset.”
Sophomore Mitch Friesenborg said he believed cancelling sports was the right thing to do.
“We’ve already seen that this virus is deadly and spreads fast, and sporting events have some of the largest turnouts besides concerts,” Friesenborg said. “Human lives are more important than the business they provide.”
Finding alternative entertainment options has not been too hard for freshman Claire Read. Since she cannot watch live sports, she has turned to reruns of older events.
“I just got done watching the U.S. soccer team from 2015 play against Japan,” Read said. “My dad and I like to watch old games and a lot of history channels together.”
There may not be live sports for a while, but there are still sports to watch. It may not produce the suspense that live competitions provide, but it may just hold sports fans over until the pandemic passes and athletes return to the courts, fields and stadiums.
