By Matthew Weidler
Sports are back. The first NFL Sunday has happened, the MLB is two-thirds of the way through their season, and the NHL and NBA are in their playoff semi-finals. March of this year, when all sports were put on a hiatus, feels like a lifetime ago. COVID-19 not only shutdown sports, but the entire country. The return of sports gives people something to look forward to and entertain themselves with.
Watching the Chiefs vs. Texans opening night game this past Thursday was amazing. The NFL season was kicked off with two elite QBs and two great teams. But something still felt off. Due to COVID-19, the Chiefs allowed 19,000 fans in their stadium that holds 70,000. Fans are part of what makes sports so great. Some teams held a quarter capacity and some teams played without fans.
Chiefs coach Andy Reid was wearing a huge mask covering his entire face, which many people found comical. However, he’s just doing what he feels comfortable with while still doing his job. COVID-19 has taken away sports for so long that the fans are content, despite the new differences.
The NFL and MLB are having each team play at their own stadiums. The MLB took a big risk with this, and they have paid some consequences. The Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals both had their play suspended for two weeks with outbreaks. There have been many other teams around the league with cases, including the New York Mets.
The NHL and NBA did bubble formats. They packed all of their players into one city and let nobody in or out without a two week quarantine period. This is a sacrifice for the players as they do not get to see their families but it is an effective strategy of keeping the virus out of sports.
Opposed to baseball, who had many coronavirus cases and two outbreaks in the NHL, NBA has not had a single case. The New York Yankees also missed games due to a series against the Phillies, since they just had played the Marlins who had an outbreak. This shows the extreme impact one outbreak of corona can have on the entire league.
Although it’s sad the fans can’t attend the Yankee and Jets games, getting sports back has been a hard journey, so we should just be grateful to have it. Many people put in a lot of work and time to make this possible and we need to realize that.
Nonetheless it is a great time to be a sports fan. We have all four major pro sports in America going on right now something that is an extremely rare occurrence. Even under the unusual and unfortunate circumstances there is a lot to be entertained by right now.
