It's Okay to Be Sad that Sports are Gone for a While

We've always used sports to help us get through the tough times. Now what do we do?

Atlanta--After four decades of being married to a sports writer my bride knew that something was wrong.

“It’s okay to be sad,” she said.

But is it?

As a country we are going through something unprecedented. We’ve had bad economic times. We’ve had health scares. But now we have crushing economic times that are being caused by a terrifying virus. We are, very correctly, hunkering down to home.

Last Sunday Maria and I watched our church services on the internet.

Our granddaughter’s school is closed indefinitely and so she is learning from home.

I went to the grocery store for about 15 minutes and tried to stay six feet away from everybody. It was unnerving.

We went to a small print shop to pick up some signs. Another person was conducting business inside. We stood outside until he left.

I instinctively shake hands with everyone I meet. I hug my friends. No more. It’s either a Bernie-Biden elbow bump or a wave of acknowledgement followed by a sigh because it was necessary.

My God, it’s only Wednesday.

This needs to be said of up front. Dealing with this virus and all of the bad stuff that is coming with it is our top priority. If that means shutting everything down in an effort to slow the spread of the virus, then that is what we’re going to do.

I have an 87-year-old mother, a wife, a daughter and a granddaughter. Nothing is more important than protecting them.

But here’s the deal. When we’ve faced difficult times in the past, we’ve always had sports to give us a break from the anxiety. Sports didn’t make our problems go away. They just gave us a chance to catch our breath.

But not now. Consider this:

**-- The NCAA Men’s basketball tournament was supposed to begin with the First Four in Dayton. The first round of the tournament on Thursday and Friday is nothing less than a national holiday. I read an article that a lot of men actually schedule vasectomies during the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament because they know they’ll be confined to the couch for four days. It is a huge part of our culture. And now it’s gone. Just gone.

**--The Final Four, and all the ancillary events that go with it, was scheduled for Atlanta, my home. You can’t measure the true negative financial impact of shutting down the tournament.

**--After the NCAA Tournament we would roll seamlessly into the Masters golf tournament, just two hours away from Atlanta. Regardless of what the calendar says, The Masters marks the start of spring in our part of the world. Augusta National is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. The tournament has been postponed to a later date but earlier this week Jack Nicklaus told ESPN that he didn’t believe the event would be played this year.

**--Major League Baseball was supposed to start about a week from now.

**--The ACC and the SEC announced Tuesday that they won’t resume spring sports this academic year. It’s mid-March and the college sports year is over. It was expected but that doesn’t make it any less disappointing.

There are more holes in athletics soul—like the NBA and NASCAR—but you get the picture.

Our lives are going to change in ways we can’t anticipate. We’ll fight. We’ll do the things that are hard, as President Kennedy once said. And we will get through this together.

But here is the question I have before I leave you today:

When we are again safe to do so, will we continue to congregate in these large stadiums to enjoy the games we love? Or will this make people re-think being a part of a large crowd? Does this terrible episode make a permanent change to the psyche of the American sports fan?

No one knows the answer. I just look forward to the day that we all have that option.

Until then, be safe. Wash your hands. Tell the people you love to wash their hands.

And it’s okay to be a little sad because sports, our very good friend, is going to be gone for a while.

But he will return. He has to.