Games without fans? If only it was that simple for Royals, MLB, NFL, all other sports
Before we get to the real point of this column, the one that people in all sports are whispering about but are mostly hesitant to say out loud, let us address a talking point from the week.
Yes, leagues would hold games without fans the millisecond they feel the revenue outweighs the potential fallout. That’s how business works.
No, it wouldn’t be as fun to watch as a game in a packed and rocking stadium. Architects design stadiums to maximize crowd noise for a reason.
Ratings might not be the same, but many would absolutely watch, and anyone who thinks otherwise is unaware of all the people watching ESPN the Ocho.
Let’s be blunt: We as a people are currently hoarding toilet paper against all reason, gambling on simulated video games and steadily pushing happy hour up a few minutes every day. You think we’re above watching actual sports on TV just because the stands are empty?
Also: I’m begging you to respect me for resisting a joke about the Royals’ TV ratings remaining strong the last few years.
Now to the real point: The space between being able to play without fans and being able to play games with fans is astronomically small. The debate is irrelevant, because it misses a more pressing truth — we’re much further from watching games of any kind than many seem ready to admit.
For many who make a living inside these industries, the prospect of a completely lost baseball season and a delayed football season feels more realistic than playing games without fans anytime soon.
This is all changing rapidly, but Steve Stites, chief medical officer for KU health systems, gave a cautiously optimistic response this week when asked whether the Royals and Major League Baseball would play this season.
“I don’t know the answer to that question, to be completely honest,” he said. “I think that baseball will be back this year. I don’t know when it’s going to be back. I don’t think it’s going to be in June. I think it will be more toward the late summer.”
This week, I participated in the time-honored sportswriter tradition of texting a bunch of athletes, executives, coaches and scouts.
The informal poll asked those in baseball this question: from 1 to 10, 10 being supremely confident, how confident are you that we’ll have some form of a 2020 MLB season?
The responses ranged from 2 to 8, from “I haven’t heard any good news about any of this ... have you?” to “We have the smartest people in the world working on this.”
A similar poll asked those in the NFL this question: 1-10, how confident are you that your season will start on time?”
The most representative answer came with a 6: “On one end we have four months, on the other end not slowing down.”
In other words: don’t nobody know nothing.
“I know what you guys know on that,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said on a conference call this week. “Just from what the commissioner said, that they’re anticipating having a season. We’re all just taking this day by day and seeing where we go with this thing.”
Here’s Kansas men’s basketball coach Bill Self, in a conversation recorded for a KC Star podcast: “We have the smartest people in the world working on it, so I think we’ll figure it out. So I think it’ll happen. But I don’t have much confidence to think it’ll be 1-4 months from now, I really don’t.”
That’s why we have contingency plans. Lots of contingency plans. Major League Baseball is reportedly discussing a 100-game season that would eliminate the All-Star Game at Dodger Stadium but put the World Series there as compensation. A side benefit is baseball could be played later in the calendar in a climate like Los Angeles. That provides cover if baseball can’t start until August, say, or even later.
But at some point, it’s going to make more sense to lose a delayed and severely truncated season entirely if doing so means enjoying a full 2021 season.
College football officials are thinking about what delays would look like, perhaps even starting in January. The NFL is putting on a strong public face, saying the league’s focus and energy is being spent on starting the season on time (which would likely mean the first game being played at Arrowhead Stadium on Thursday, Sept. 10).
But there is too much money at stake to believe the NFL isn’t considering other options, and no reason compliant with public health to force training camps in July and real games in September. A few months’ delay would be unprecedented.
But we’ve already seen that doing what’s necessary has meant doing what’s unprecedented.
Look, we all want good news. We all want the inconvenience to be short and the health risks to be even shorter. But taking the available public information and forming a timeline does not provide much optimism.
Various estimates have COVID-19 cases peaking in two to three weeks. Those are just guesses, however. As FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb pointed out, in other countries the peak of the epidemic hit four to six weeks after preventative measures like lockdowns and social distancing were enacted.
Many American states, including Missouri, have yet to issue stay-at-home orders. Infectious disease experts tell us that if the virus is spreading anywhere, it can spread everywhere. Virginia’s stay-at-home order will expire June 10.
Lets assume other states take similar steps, but also that the shutdowns don’t last longer than currently planned. If baseball teams need four weeks of spring training, we’re already looking at losing more than half the schedule.
Isolation and social distancing stink. It’s inconvenient. It’s worse. Americans have filed record unemployment claims two weeks in a row. Grandparents can’t see grandchildren, parents can’t see their own parents. In the worst cases, people are dying alone, their loved ones unable to say goodbye.
We all want this over as quickly as possible, and some potential good news has surfaced with apparent medical progress toward a vaccine.
But we also know from health experts and real-life examples that ending social distancing and going back to real life too quickly can have disastrous and even tragic consequences. The best intentions can be the worst actions if it means dropping precautions.
Various health experts point out that by a public-health standard the pandemic will not end for at least a year, and likely closer to 18 months. Basically, we need that vaccine.
“As long as the virus persists somewhere, there’s a chance that one infected traveler will reignite fresh sparks,” Ed Yong wrote in The Atlantic.
The most relevant example comes from sports, actually. Japan’s Nippon Pro Baseball league is essentially a flashing neon warning sign. Teams there played training games without fans on March 20 in preparation for the season beginning April 24.
But just five days into the experiment, three players on one team tested positive for coronavirus. That led to a quarantine for all players and staff. Even then, the league announced intentions to play through the pandemic before reports this week surfaced that officials are now open to delaying the start of the season.
Keep in mind that Japan has had far fewer positive tests per capita than the United States. All players, staff and media have been screened as they enter ballparks and are told not to touch each other. At least one team is essentially operating in a group quarantine, living together, eating together, without contact with the outside world.
In other words, Japan has fewer cases and its baseball league has taken every reasonable precaution, from keeping fans away to daily screens and even a functional quarantine.
And it hasn’t worked.
This should be the biggest fear and the clearest guidance for major sports leagues and other businesses: The only thing worse than months of self-isolation would be having to do it again because we didn’t have the stomach to do it right.
This is why playing games without fans might prove unfeasible. The broad strokes make sense — if the virus spreads through social contact, let’s eliminate that social contact and the games can happen on TV.
But both health experts and real-world examples are showing it is not that simple. Professional and major-college sports require much more than just athletes and coaches — stadium workers, trainers, support staff, grounds crew, media and many more are needed for these games to take place.
Anything less than a full quarantine for all involved would mean at least some risk. That means families would be affected. Will everyone around these games agree to live in full isolation, away from even family?
Plus, the experience in Japan shows that once an athlete tests positive, it effectively shuts the whole thing down.
It’s often said that the best of sports is that it provides an escape from real life, but that’s never been literally true. Sports can help you forget your stress for a few hours. It can’t make real problems go away.
As much as a lot of us desperately want games to return in any form, and soon, sports has no immunity.
The games will likely have to wait for real life to return, just like the rest of us.