Another week, another step closer to having no clue about the week after. There are signs that some kind of Stockholm Syndrome has set into our industry – every business, essential or non-essential — is planning for life after COVID-19, but because most media outlets don’t have reporters assigned to, say, the store at the end of your street, nobody gets bent out of shape. But woe to any sports league that is revealed to be discussing options to come back. The nerve.
As far as I can tell, the public health system has not been damaged by baseball commissioner Rob Manfred holding conference calls with owners and the Major League Baseball Players Association. Or Adam Silver or Gary Bettman investigating and discussing concepts aimed at bringing their seasons to a conclusion. Or Randy Ambrosie saying maybe the CFL starts on Labour Day. Maybe I missed it … but do the folks who cover other beats get up on their high horse whenever word leaks out about the things they cover discussing post-pandemic plans? I mean, other than the UFC or Belarusian Premier League there is no sports league that has said: to hell with it. Get the damned bodies out of the way. And the UFC stood down from its plan to hold a card on territorial land this weekend when Disney and ESPN acquiesced to political pressure in California.
(If only ESPN had also pulled the plug on that H-O-R-S-E competition. What the hell was that garbage?)
As I said last week on Writers Bloc: I get it. You’re woke. I’m woke. We’re all woke. Nobody wants anybody to die …
And so this will be another week of looking at models and projections, and trying to find the balance between defeating a pandemic and having something left to return to when it’s done. It will be another week of people saying, “this plan is wrong,” or “that plan is right,” or “let’s not plan for anything because the world’s going to end” after they’ve cautioned you by saying: “we’ve never seen anything like this before.” Because there is nothing else to write or talk about and, as Aristotle (or was it Socrates Brito) said: nature abhors a vacuum.
From my point of view, there might be lessons to be learned from other countries and leagues that have attempted or are attempting to restart because they were the first touched by this pandemic. That’s solid stuff. A caveat? In most instances those countries are smaller both in terms of geography and population than the U.S. — let’s be clear: we are an aside here when it comes to sports and entertainment in North America; without the U.S. getting its act together it doesn’t matter — and have different systems for delivering health care. They also don’t have a turnip running things, unlike the U.S.
The Chinese Basketball Association has had a stutter-step, on-again/off-again response to the pandemic. It kind of/sort of plans to restart in May, but keep an eye on indications this weekend that a second wave of the novel coronavirus might be developing in the country. Taiwan’s Super League is playing its basketball games in a centralized training centre with only teams, referees, official scorers and media in attendance. No more than 100 people are allowed into the facility at one time, and as Axios reports although, no testing is done on-site, each player has their temperature checked at entry. Any player registering a temperature of 99.5 Fahrenheit or above is refused entry. Keep in mind: Taiwan, a country of 24 million, has recorded six coronavirus deaths. Japan is likely a better case study … and that ain’t grounds for optimism. From saying the Summer Olympics were a go, to now not being able to say with certainty they’ll be held in 2021, to putting on hold plans by the Nippon Professional Baseball League to begin play this month, caution is still a necessary watch-word. The Korean Baseball Association hopes to play exhibition games next week and hold a 144-game regular season.
Then there’s Europe.
By many estimates the United Kingdom will end up having the greatest number of COVID-19 casualties on that continent, so it will be fascinating to see what comes out of Friday’s teleconference call with Premier League bosses. ESPN reports the Premier League and teams in the English Football League are targeting June 6 as a date to resume competition behind closed doors, with three weeks of training scheduled to begin on May 16. It’s clear that the Bundesliga’s stated intention of playing games early next month — clubs in the top two divisions of German soccer have been practising for two weeks since receiving clearance from the German government — has put pressure on other leagues dependent on television revenue. Real Sociedad, of Spain’s la Liga, had intended to resume workouts this Tuesday after that country’s government lifted some restrictions on workers, only to bow to pressure from Irene Lozano, the country’s sports minister and announce that they were delaying those plans and would await further guidance from the government.
Again: there are huge national and regional differences surrounding all of these cases that suggest there is no one-size-fits-all answer. I’m still skeptical that every North American pro league will be able to finish its playoffs, let alone its regular season. But I’m also confident that just as public health authorities will take the lead in giving guidance to other industries when it comes to re-opening, so too is the ball in their court when it comes to sports. What you don’t want to have is what happened in Australia this weekend: the National Rugby League announced a May 28 return; the federal sports minister called it “a bit ambitious.” Stay out of the way. Follow the evidentiary lead. That’s what Silver, the NBA commissioner, told U.S. President Donald Trump that the commissioners wanted to do. That’s kind of the way it should be, no?
QUIBBLES AND BITS
• Found this picture of a batter, catcher and umpire wearing masks during the 1918 flu pandemic and wondered how many athletic wear companies have prototypes with swooshes, UAs and three stripes ready to go …
• It was a brutal week for hockey: Colby Cave, Pat Stapleton, Tom Webster and tough-buy John Hughes all passing away. I remember a visit that Stapleton and Ken Dryden paid to our Sportsnet 590/The Fan studios as part of a speaking tour surrounding the 1972 Summit Series, and the delight Stapleton took in fanning suspicions that he still had or at least knew of the puck from that final game in Moscow when Paul Henderson scored the goal of goals. His Team Canada teammate Brad Park told us this past week that everybody on the team knew Stapleton had the puck. Park vividly remembers the white-haired defenceman bending down to pick it up — and that nobody on the team much cared, “We told him to sell it or something, if he wanted.”
• Funny line from old friend Tim Kurkjian of ESPN this weekend, who revealed he’d been told that one of the options MLB was considering as a means of returning was playing games in Japan. “I couldn’t even report it, it was so ridiculous,” he said. “And yet, in the end, I think something ridiculous is how we’re going to play the season, if we play the season.”
THE ENDGAME
The Chicago Bulls ended up hiring Arturas Karnisovas as their new executive vice-president of basketball operations after the Toronto Raptors refused to give them permission to talk to general manager Bobby Webster, and my guess is the continued lack of news regarding the Raptors’ long-term plans for their front office — including head coach Nick Nurse — is going to cause even more concern among the fanbase if the pandemic drags on and eventually kills the 2019-2020 season. I’m not certain it should, though. First, I think we’ve all seen enough to know that Larry Tanenbaum and Masai Ujiri have a pretty good handle on things, including their own relationship, and there is something special about the culture in that place that screams: “All in good time.” Second, how do we not know that discussions haven’t been had in some manner? My guess is the Raptors front office is smart enough to realize that at a time when the game is shut down and players are looking at losing wages, handing out multi-year extensions to executives requires a little more than the usual delicacy. That need for delicacy gets even more pronounced the longer the NBA goes without games …
Jeff Blair hosts Writers Bloc with Stephen Brunt and Richard Deitsch from 1 to 4 p.m. ET on Sportsnet 590/The Fan. You can also hear us live on the @Sportsnet app, here or tell Google or Alexa to “play Sportsnet 590.” Rate, review and subscribe to our podcast,
