The college football season is underway and slowly but surely working its way back to pretty much full participation. The NFL season has three full weeks under its belt. The NHL just crowned a Stanley Cup champion and the NBA will crown its champion within a week or two. Major League Baseball just began its playoff tournament.
Despite all that has gone on with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world of sports has continued to turn. Despite all the predictions of doom and gloom, all the scientists and “experts” who made claims that it is impossible to happen without a coronavirus vaccine, the world of sports has returned.
And it will even get better the next few weeks as we start to see stadiums allow fans to trickle in. That, too, was predicted to not be possible until there was a vaccine.
Yet here we are, with wall-to-wall sports almost every day, and soon the stadiums without fans will be the exception, not the rule. And despite that, I am still reading about how terrible it is that sports are being played, how hard it is to enjoy sports right now and how these temporary formats/rules changes make it feel like it is not real.
Look, I am not trying to be a pie in the sky type of person here, but all of you doom-and-gloomers and negative Nancy types need to come up for air a little bit. It is time to stop shaming people for enjoying sports and just sit back and enjoy the fact that we have achieved some level of normalcy.
Yes, there are setbacks and it isn’t perfect. We knew that going into all of this. We knew there would be tough days, there would be hiccups, there would be protocols that need to be tweaked and there may be times when teams have to sit out for a week or two. We knew all that. We knew it wouldn’t be easy and we knew there would be some sacrifices.
What boggles my mind, though, is through all of this we still have many who choose to focus on the negative. They choose to cling to every piece of bad news or every setback and make bold declarations like, “This is why we shouldn’t be doing this!”
It makes no sense.
America is a bitter place to be in right now because we are mired in a pandemic, racial unrest and an election that is as divisive as any I can recall. There is so much negativity; we are starving for things to take our minds off the real world for a while.
That’s why the restart of sports has been a good development. They are entertainment, and while I know there is a push by athletes to be socially aware, once the games begin, we are focused on scores and statistics. We are focused on who is winning and losing and the incredible performances of the best athletes in the world.
That’s also why many of you need to stop whining because you don’t like the extra-inning rules in baseball and just enjoy that we have baseball back. Stop whining because a few college football games each week need to be canceled and enjoy the fact that the overwhelming majority of the games are being played.
And stop complaining because the atmosphere in the bubble isn’t what you think it should be. Why not just enjoy that the Tampa Bay Lightning played some incredible hockey over the last month? And one of the greatest to ever play in the NBA is back in the Finals again, against the team with which he won his first NBA title?
It isn’t perfect. It isn’t going to be perfect. Yes, the Titans-Steelers game might be postponed this week because of an outbreak, but why is this a surprise? MLB had some hiccups along the way and it just began a playoffs that some predicted would never happen.
If the Steelers can’t play Sunday, how about instead of complaining about it, spend the day with your family, play golf, take a walk or watch one of the other dozen or so games that are on?
There are plenty of things to complain about these days, but I have news for you — sports aren’t one of them. The fact that we have them has defied the odds, and we should see them as a symbol of optimism that life can go on despite the pandemic that we are engulfed in.
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