Coronavirus is a Serious Threat, Keeping Fans Out of Arenas Should be Obvious

COVID-19 is a serious public health issue. Forget money, forget politics. Sports should lead the way in how we handle it.

We often talk about sports bringing people together. It’s time for sports to keep people apart. Close the arenas. Play the games before empty seats. Fans usually support their teams; it’s time for teams to look out for the fans. And as COVID-19 spreads, we need somebody to show the rest of us that this is not a political issue. It’s about public health, and keeping a bad situation from getting much worse.

Overreaction? Two days ago, I thought so, too. But sports are a stats-driven enterprise, and so here are two for you:

1. According to The Washington Post, 16 days ago there were 100 cases of COVID-19 in Italy. Ten days ago: 1,000. Today: 10,000.

2. Tom Frieden, the former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote that it’s possible that coronavirus will kill a million people in the U.S.

Among Frieden’s recommendations: “Cancel large gatherings, with the exception of geographic regions and populations not experiencing community transmission. Making that hard decision now could mean the difference between thousands and tens of thousands of infections in a community. If mass meetings do occur, older and medically vulnerable people should not attend.”

Most of our largest gatherings involve sports. Leagues need to keep Frieden’s words at the forefront of their minds as they make decisions, because the way we are looking at this is backwards. We are viewing COVID-19 the way we view a sports story, and asking the question: How big can this thing get? Big enough to play NCAA tournament games in empty arenas? To cancel the Masters? To postpone the Olympics by a year?

It’s one thing for the Ivy League to cancel its basketball tournament and spring practices. Quite another to skip the lighting of the Olympic torch.

But the virus doesn’t care about the size of the trophy. If, as experts say, we should avoid larger gatherings, then logically, the bigger the event, in terms of crowds, the more inclined we should be to cancel it. From a medical perspective, it does not make sense to cancel an Ivy League basketball tournament and welcome 71,000 fans to Mercedes-Benz Stadium for the Final Four in Atlanta. If that’s what happens, then we are making decisions based on economics instead of public health.

Most of the decisions being made so far have been business decisions. It’s easy for leagues to keep the media out of clubhouses and locker rooms; the NBA cannot afford for LeBron James to get sick. But what about the 20,000 fans who show up to games? Who is protecting them?

And as some of the best, most prestigious schools in the country tell students to stay home, how can the NCAA in good conscience hold larger gatherings for sporting events? What does that say? Sports are more important than class? Profit is more important than public health?

This may all seem alarmist. It does feel that way. But I’m not the one sounding the alarms. The former director of the CDC did, and he is not alone. Italy has essentially banned weddings and funerals. France banned large indoor gatherings of more than 5,000 people. Switzerland banned gatherings of more than 1,000 people. Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe just requested that large sports and cultural events be canceled or postponed for 10 more days. Korea and Japan have both postponed the start of their baseball seasons.

Here in the U.S., Ohio governor Mike DeWine just declared a state of emergency and recommended that indoor sporting events on every level be held without spectators.

DeWine is a Republican, by the way. He has worked on President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. We bring this up because it tells you, again, that this should not be a political issue. It’s not a media conspiracy to tank the economy and hurt the President’s re-election chances. (If anything, getting this under control soon would seem to help his chances.) It’s not a “Chinese coronavirus” and not a creation from one end of the political party overreacting. It’s a lousy, scary thing that affects all of us.

And this is where our sports leagues can make a huge difference. Everybody understands that Americans want their games, and that sports leagues make a lot of money by staging them in front of large audiences. Keeping the fans out would not just be the right safety measure; it would remind everybody that this is not what anybody wants, but what the country needs right now. The NBA, NHL and NCAA want to sell every seat. If they decide not to do it, that takes the political argument away. Cruise companies have changed cancellation policies, potentially costing themselves millions of dollars. Holding games in empty arenas would be an even bigger and more important statement.

And whatever most people think about journalists, I assume they also know that sportswriters like to attend sporting events, and we like the energy of a crowd. Empty arenas are not our preferred solution.

This is not about beating the coronavirus; it’s about slowing the spread and limiting the number of victims. What we know about COVID-19 is that the old are more at risk than the young, those with respiratory illnesses are in graver danger than those without, and indoor transmission is more likely than outdoor. It is highly infectious. It is spread from surfaces as much as anything. Washing hands is a much better preventive measure than wearing a mask.

It is time for our sports organizations to lead the way. On most days, in most situations, sports are a pleasant distraction. We have been distracted enough.