Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Bark louder, little dog.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

Alternative history is always a weak argument. Always.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

This fight is for everything.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Sunday Evening Open Thread: Not Looking Good for Professional Sports

Sunday Evening Open Thread: Not Looking Good for Professional Sports

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Not gloating, I swear. But perhaps it is really not the best time?

Maybe not this fall, either?

Professional sports writer chimes in:

Reader Interactions

81Comments

  1. 1.

    catclub

    why in god’s name were they practicing in florida are there any adults left

     

    Yeah, SPRING training is in Florida because it is warmish in february. Now it is summer. Idiot creatures of habit. Going out and giving 110% every day.

  2. 2.

    ET

    But it isn’t just professional sports is it? College teams are seeing players test positive as well.

  3. 3.

    Kilgore Trout

    I can’t believe they are even thinking about professional sports this year.

    We had no high school baseball games this season. Got an email late last week from my baseball umpire association assignor that there is going to be a truncated summer league season starting July 1st. I thought about it for about 2 minutes and emailed him back “not this year for me”. The last thing I need is to be hovering two feet away from a couple of 16 year old catchers for two hours a few times/week. I mean, I really miss it, but seriously?

    My son called Friday to see if I wanted meet him at the park with his family and play some catch with my 5 year old grandson. They’ll come out and watch me call games sometimes, and when I got there my grandson was disappointed I wasn’t wearing my umpire gear…lol. I told him “maybe next year”.

  4. 4.

    mrmoshpotato

    I cannot stress this enough: There is always next year.

    Said by Cubs fans from 1909 through 2015.

  5. 5.

    jl

    I think they should just can the seasons for the next year, and maybe do whatever semi-regular exhibition games with healthy players, community service stuff in the mean time.

    Sure several other countries have been able to start pro sports safely. Maybe coincidence, who knows? But they were also countries that showed basic competence and good faith in controlling the epidemic.

    And, look, now they can do all sorts of ordinary stuff that we just plain can’t do in the US. Unfair to Trump, certainly. Doing it just to spite him, probably.

    Sometimes totally effing everything up has consequences that cannot be escaped. The majority of the billionaire owners who run pro sports teams have forgotten that, or never learned it, because of our longstanding mind boggling political and social corruption and decay.

  7. 7.

    FelonyGovt

    I miss baseball terribly. It doesn’t feel like summer without it. However, I think it and the other professional sports should all just shut down and forget about these half-assed attempts to salvage some TV advertising dollars.

  8. 8.

    rikyrah

    Someone on another blog said something about professional leagues:

     

    All it takes is one groupie

     

     

    I thought about that ??????

  9. 9.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    C’mon MLB, NBA, NFL, if you can do martial arts fights over video conference, how hard would it be to have a sportsball game from home? Let’s think outside the box here.

  10. 10.

    HumboldtBlue

    I cannot stress this enough: There is always next year.

    But for many teams and even leagues, that’s no longer the case and the impact of COVID on sports is only just beginning to be felt.

    The Germans, Italians, Spanish, English and other European leagues have resumed playing professional football and doing so under strict practices and policies and that’s only in an attempt to fulfill contracts related to broadcasting and the attendant revenue.

    The idea that Anfield, home of the current European, International and English Premier League club champions will once again be filled with 57,000 singing Reds is a long way off.

    I miss baseball very much and yet the idea of sitting in the seats for a summer night Humboldt Crabs game is anathema, despite the longing and desire to be in that atmosphere, drinking a beer, razzing the opposing players while the Crab Grass Band fills to July air with music.

    European football may have a current plan to actually play the games contracts depend on but the future is very much in doubt and the further you go down the food chain in the football league ladder the direr the future prospects look.

    Now apply that to minor league baseball, college athletics, the G-League, we’re going to see an extraordinary upheaval in the sporting universe.

    As with all industries dependent upon us filling their spaces with human bodies, the future of live sports and how the supporters actually participate is very much a new universe to explore.

    Sports is wholly dependent on the human experience and without crowds, it suffers tremendously in appeal and drama.

    Don’t underestimate how big monied interests are driving to at least get players on a competitive field, there are billions and billions of dollars at stake and a world-wide sporting industry faces a rather daunting and massive restructure due to the social and economic disruption caused by the virus.

  11. 11.

    Bruuuuce

    I’m a serious baseball fan. But with 40 MLB players and staff apparently testing positive over this past week, any restart is looking unlikely. And that’s before the atrocious owners not bargaining in good faith.

    The best shot at pro sports this year is the NFL, but we’d have to see every state do what New York did and get the virus under control before we could be confident in playing games. And, of course, fans in the stands are Right Out.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    From what I’ve heard the cable channel that covers local sports in the state is filling time with reruns of high school volleyball matches.

  13. 13.

    jl

    @FelonyGovt:  I’m a baseball fan, and that sport had half a chance to do something. But the corruption and incompetence of the owners is mind boggling, the longstanding bad management-player relations fatal to them doing anything.

    I’m also a basketball fan, but I just don’t see how their ‘bubble’ plan can work. Steve Kerr said recently that psychologically and physically, it will be unbearable meat grinder, and he wondered what teams could pull it off. Assuming they don’t all get sick half way through.

    Just can the damn seasons and do other things in the meantime. I think baseball and basketball could find a way to play some exhibition games safely, and various contests and tournaments, like a hoops swish shooting contest (that could be done very socially distanced, no audience, or not much, needed), but that would be too much fun and not enough money for the owners. If anyone in this world can take the hit, it’s US pro sports owners (most of them, at least)

    Edit: and there is a lot of community service stuff the players could be doing, locally, regionally and nationally, that would keep the sports profiles up and shining. But I repeat myself. The owners are thinking about nothing but keeping the cash rolling, even if they produce a very high risk of a disgusting disaster that flops.

  14. 14.

    Punchy

    The NFL is magnitudes more arrogant and cocksure than everyone else. They’re GOING TO HAVE a season, they say. Going to start in Sept, they say. Americans gunna be infected by the 3+ mill by then, certainly. Let’s just see how Trumpain the NFL becomes amidst such stark disaster.

  15. 15.

    catclub

    @jl: Sure several other countries have been able to start pro sports safely. Maybe coincidence, who knows? But they were also countries that showed basic competence and good faith in controlling the epidemic.

     

    Another thing Biden could harp on. The reason there are no sports is that Trump mismanaged the response.

  17. 17.

    catclub

    @jl: The owners are thinking about nothing but keeping the cash rolling, even if they produce a very high risk of a disgusting disaster that flops.

     

    I wonder what is happening with player salaries this year. They cannot be paying them, since salaries are a large fraction of (normal) total revenue.

  18. 18.

    Bruuuuce

    @catclub:

    I wonder what is happening with player salaries this year.

    Some bonuses were paid in the spring, before the shutdown. Actual major league salaries are not being paid. Most or all minor leaguers are receiving their $400/week stipends, because teams were shamed into it. That said, a far larger number of fringe and minor league players than usual were released this year, and only a very few have successfully found work in Korea or Japan.

  19. 19.

    Nicole

    Horse racing suddenly looking really smart for depending on gambling dollars all these years rather than in-person attendance for revenue.

    (Not that that was intentional. But, as they say in racing, better lucky than good.)

  20. 20.

    Punchy

    @catclub: yes, why no training in NowheresVille, MT?  Dead Nobody, ND?  Instead….Tampa and Clearwater, hotspots par excellence.

    Dumbass shitheads, bar none.

  21. 21.

    Gravenstone

    @catclub: It’s less creatures of habit than that is where the facilities are. They could in theory use their home ballparks, but they’re not really meant for training 40-60 guys (to start). Plus any games between teams would involve substantial travel, rather than just driving from city to city.

    I said the other day that when the news broke about the Phillies and Jays players getting sick, that we really don’t need a 2020 MLB/MiLB season. Looks like the virus is going to prove me right – eventually. But not until we try all the wrong answers first.

  22. 22.

    Martin

    @Bruuuuce: Only way NFL plays is if they choose to ignore players testing positive, meaning they better pass an expansion to the roster RTF now.

    And this also assumes that localities where games are played go along. I’m not sure any of CAs teams would be allowed to play home games at the moment. I have an NFL training camp at my work and they are currently in a holding pattern, as we can’t allow them to train just yet, and I don’t see those conditions improving in the next few months.

    This, btw, is why everyone is training in Florida. Florida won’t stop them as they’ve deemed them an essential business. It’s why WWE went to Florida as well.

  23. 23.

    jl

    Could play 1890s style women’s basketball. It would look like a cross between volley ball and grade school basketball.

    Oldest Women’s Basketball Film Footage 1904

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy6zRKIGQ3Y

    OTOH, now that I watch it again, too much close contact action. In the US, we’ll have to tone it down a notch or all the players will get sick before even a shortened season ends.

  24. 24.

    C Stars

    I enjoy a baseball game once every other year or so for atmosphere, the blanket on your lap as the sun sets over the stadium, the beer and sausage, but other than that I am not a team sports person at all. But for the first time in my life I’ve really been enjoying the SF Chronicle’s Sunday sports section during the pandemic. The articles are sentimental, punchy, political; profiles of famous local sports figures or happenings and quirky local teams. And far more coverage of hiking and camping than ever before. A very small silver lining, I guess.

  26. 26.

    rikyrah

    Police all over America are resigning because they can’t murder unarmed Black people with reckless abandon and not be held accountable.Let. That. Sink. In.— Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) June 20, 2020

  28. 28.

    Redshift

    I know the Capitals started practicing in “groups of no more than six.” The NHL is having everyone tested, and eleven players have tested positive so far. I’m not optimistic.

  30. 30.

    C Stars

    @rikyrah: Truly, police departments all over the country have been comporting themselves in a way that seems designed to not only prove the protestors’ points, but demonstrate that the entire profession is in fact much, much, much worse than we could have imagined. It’s like they’re saying, “Yeah, so we’re all immoral assholes, what’s the problem with that?”

  31. 31.

    jl

    @C Stars: It will make reformation of US policing much easier if the the people with the irredeemably bad attitudes just decide to up and quit, and at the first sign that something, anything, has to change. That is too much for them? Fine, go away then.

  33. 33.

    HumboldtBlue

    @C Stars:

    The articles are sentimental, punchy, political; profiles of famous local sports figures or happenings and quirky local teams. And far more coverage of hiking and camping than ever before. A very small silver lining, I guess.

    The best part of sportswriting is knowing that you’re going to write a story today and most times that story will be one that is focused on fun.

    Certainly, the sporting world is as humanly serious as the non, but the core block of covering sports is the chance to tell a tale about a game.

    It also helps that you know who the players are where they will be playing and at what time and place and you also have a thorough understanding of the rules of the game.

    That can be disconcerting to one who leaves sports to cover stories about crime and courts.

    Also, Slava Malamud is a must-follow.

  34. 34.

    Mousebumples

    I’m mostly sad that the basketball season is in jeopardy because my Bucks were doing really well, and I wanted to see them hopefully reach the NBA Finals (and win!). I say if they cancel the season for real (which is completely understandable, frankly), as the #1 overall seed, we should get to claim the years championship. ?

  36. 36.

    danielx

    Fantasy leagues gonna be big.

    Seriously, given the amount of brain space major league sports take up in a lot of people’s heads, I’ve been wondering about the mental state of various acquaintances. I keep thinking maybe they’ll realize they have been obsessing about watching grownups playing children’s games and there are a lot more important things to worry about, but…..nah. Never happen.

  37. 37.

    jl

    @Redshift: To keep a serious infectious disease, with no treatment or vaccine, from messing up a lot of ordinary life, you just have to get, and keep, the prevalence very low.

    The US is just too much of a failed state to pull that off, even though more and more countries can do it.

    There are no substitutes for some things in life. You want to build a submarine or go to the moon, and all you have is hand chopped wood and twine made out of reeds, maybe some pottery from a home kiln, welp, not much you can do to get those plans off the ground.

  38. 38.

    C Stars

    @jl: Exactly. Let them give up their inflated salaries and hit the road. No one’s going to cry about it.

  40. 40.

    Martin

    @jl: eSports is continuing without too much pause.  The big events  in arenas are of course cancelled but they’re continuing as online tournaments. Even the 24 hours of Le Mans was held, as scheduled, as a virtual race. 

    Madden NFL is still playing. Rocket League. DoTA.

    We’ve invented tons of new sports. They’re all just sitting there waiting for people to tune in. And these are not small productions. The DoTA grand tournament winning team took home $15.5M. It’s quite a spectacle, and it lasts over a week so there’s tons to watch.

  41. 41.

    TS (the original)

    @Kilgore Trout:

    I can’t believe they are even thinking about professional sports this year.

    Professional is the word – it is all about money.

  42. 42.

    different-church-lady

    I get the two leagues nearing the playoffs wanting to complete what they started. But why bother even starting the MLB season? And football is too far away to tell.

  43. 43.

    C Stars

    @HumboldtBlue:

     

    It also helps that you know who the players are where they will be playing and at what time and place and you also have a thorough understanding of the rules of the game.

     

    As a reader, this was the part I always got stuck on. Because I’d much rather read a fun take on a player’s style than a litany of scheduling and staffing details. (Although I realize that this is not the case with most sports fans.) Anyway, lately it feels like the Chron’s sportswriters are having fun finding ways to write about the culture of sports, rather than having to write on deadline about all the specifics.

  44. 44.

    Miss Bianca

    I wonder if the same thing is going to happen with other sports, like rodeo. My Saddle Club is still intent on putting on the rodeo in our town this summer. Every other major summer outdoor event has been cancelled. Got to review the Governor’s plan to see how it is that suddenly the ban on outdoor gatherings of more than ten has been lifted two weeks before the old public health order was due to expire.

  45. 45.

    Kilgore Trout

    @rikyrah: I’ll have to make it up to him, did see him today and brought him one of my embarrassingly large collections of baseballs.

  46. 46.

    Ken

    @danielx: Fantasy leagues gonna be big.

    Don’t they need real teams to generate the baseline stats?  I guess they could use Korean baseball teams, but in that case why not just watch the Korean games?

    And suddenly I wonder if one or more US networks are in negotiations with the Korean leagues…

  47. 47.

    HumboldtBlue

    @danielx:

    I played Three Blind Mice on a tin-pot xylophone as a four-year-old simply for fun, we even put on a concert, my sisters and I who formed the “Three Little Ones”, and for the next 24 years I played a horn or raised my voice in one endeavor after another focused on nothing more than the sweet feeling you get, one learned as a child, of playing and singing together.

    Sports is music in flesh and it’s as powerful and as demanding as any opera, symphony or Missy Elliot track and that feeble attempt to brush it aside ss as silly as a Trump rally.

  48. 48.

    Peale

    Having them play live on playstation would be a hoot for awhile.  I mean, come on. For Gen Zoom, spending hours watching gamers live is huge.  Heck, they don’t even have to play the game they’re known for. Christian Yellich vs. Giannis Antetokounmpo in Elder Scrolls to see who is really the MVP in Wisconsin. I’d watch.

  50. 50.

    Redshift

    @jl: I’m listening to the interview on Preet Bharara’s podcast with Scott Thomson, the chief of the Camden, NJ police department that’s the model for, well, everywhere now. They were only able to dismantle and it because of some peculiarities of state authority over police departments that exist in that state but few of any others.

    Another interesting point he makes (good for those of us uncomfortable with unions being a big part of the problem) is that the problem was the union leadership, not the union as a concept. The surrounding county created a police force and they disbanded the city police force, and within a few months they had a new union local, under the same union, but with new leadership.

  51. 51.

    JeffH

    @West of the Cascades: I really wish the NCAA would step up and cancel the football season, because then a whole lot of colleges and universities would likely end the charade of being able to safely bring students back to campus for fall semester.

  53. 53.

    Ken

    @Miss Bianca: Are you in Missouri? According to relatives there, the governor still hasn’t cancelled the state fair because (1) he was a farmer and (2) he doesn’t want to be known as the one who cancelled it.  To which I add (3) he’s a moron and a Republican, but I repeat myself.

    I also have the horrible suspicion they’d cancel the fair if there were a disease affecting the livestock.

  55. 55.

    Ladyraxterinok

    @rikyrah:

    They’re saying ‘either you let us treat black people as badly as we please or we aren’t going to answer your 911 cr0ies for help! So there—choose!’

  57. 57.

    Martin

    @Peale: Elder Scrolls really doesn’t make  for the best spectating experience.

    Esports really breaks down into two categories – sports that stream well like Fortnite, where you follow one individual until they are knocked out or win. Fortnite doesn’t do well as a broad spectator sport because you have 100 people spread out over a massive area all engaged in individual skirmishes. There’s no place to focus  the spectator attention.

    And then sports that are more constrained like Rocket League (which is soccer with cars) or Madden which is just NFL or my favorite DoTA which also takes place on a limited size map. Those tend to not work well for streaming because you really do benefit from that overall view of the action. And  in most cases you can even spectate from within the game allowing  you to have  control of the camera and decide what you want to focus on, or have a  traditional sports event with casters, etc.

    The production values on the LeMans race was really impressive. They really went all out. The other major sports are the same. All the same components – player interviews, stats, commentary panel, rivalries, arena full of fans and the energy that comes from that, etc.

  58. 58.

    HumboldtBlue

    @C Stars:

    Resources and how you deploy them. Sports is and always will be a deep and rich vein for human interest stories but where do you spend the resources you have covering a game, the matchup itself or the features on who is involved?

    That’s the bare bones of it, but the stories about the people who took the field as people are always more fascinating.

    Sports is voyeurism for those us on the outside the pitch, track or court, who can’t be on the field or in the locker room but who find the human story played out in live theater, irresistible.

  61. 61.

    Tom Q

    I’d be watching baseball most every night of the week were they playing, and it kills me to miss a season where my favored team had a decent shot at going all the way.

    But we have to be grown-ups and admit it’s just stupid to try and start a season (a season that would never be considered legit by anyone, to begin with).  Every time a bunch of players have got together in the last few weeks, infections have appeared — making clear that the scientists have it right, that the virus is right where it was in  March, and it’s only that we’ve stayed away from one another that has kept it from being a far more massive pandemic.  I’m pretty sure we’re not far from the powers that be coming to Keith Olbermann’s conclusion.

    However, as a bonus negative, the bad faith displayed in the MLB owners/players face-off has insured we’ll have labor wars next year (or whenever the sport does resume).  Good times.

  62. 62.

    Kent

    What we need is new sports. Whole unknown brave new world out there.

    Tennis and golf are the only two professional sports I can think of that could easily be conducted safely from a athlete’s point of view.  At least singles tennis.  Of course still no way to pack in the spectators.  Golf is normally played in pairs but there is no reason for the players to ever come within 10 ft of each other if they don’t want to.  And tennis they are separated by at least 50 ft most of the time.

    Some track and field events can probably be run fairly safely.  Cycling time trials could be run.  And a lot of winter sports like speed skating, downhill skiing, nordic skiing, figure skating, and so forth.  Also sailing, surfing, rock climbing, etc.  In fact a ton of olympic sports are probably pretty safe from an athlete’s perspective.

  64. 64.

    Kent

    @JeffH:@West of the Cascades: I really wish the NCAA would step up and cancel the football season, because then a whole lot of colleges and universities would likely end the charade of being able to safely bring students back to campus for fall semester.

    Oh, they’ll still carry on the charade.  Having students on campus is what balances their books.  They’ll be millions in the hole without full dorms and cafeterias and such.  Even schools that lack football are doing their best to re-open for the fall for that reason.

  66. 66.

    Pooh

    (Also professional sportswriter checking in)

    Without taking a final position on what a league should or should not do, team staff testing positive for COVID as teams return to work isn’t a referendum on sports yay or nay, but a reflection that because of the overall fuckedupedness of the response nationwide, the choice isn’t between safely not playing and dangerously playing. The background risk is decidedly non-zero. For leagues which are going to attempt to compete in a “bubble” I think it’s quite likely that the risk to individual players is probably lower than it would be otherwise, but the systemic risks to the league are considerably higher, as the tail risk worst-case scenarios find everyone in the same place instead of spread out across the continent.

    ETA: I think way too much is being made of this sport or that sport being safer, because especially without fans in the arena, it’s not the 2-3 hours of the game which we’re worried about so much as the other 21-22 hours of the day.

  69. 69.

    sralloway

    @jl: Agree. NBA, NHL, MLB and NFL should call it off until the next season. Nobody dies. We just wait a year for play to resume. It won’t kill the or us.

  70. 70.

    laura

    We’ve been watching used baseball and its…okay. I really wish that ABC would empty out the vault and rerun episodes of Wide World of Sports a couple 2 3 times a week in primetime. It would go a long ways to fill the gaps and the sports coats, the side burns, the barstool racing… well, there is just no downside that I can think of.

  74. 74.

    Soprano2

    @Ken: I’m in Missouri. I hadn’t heard about the state fair but can’t say I’m surprised. I think the local Ozark Empire Fair is still on for now. I’ll be surprised if they don’t cancel it,  though. The local government has been good considering we’re in MAGA land here. The county just to the south is open with no restrictions on anything, so I figure it’s only a matter of time until we have an outbreak.  *sigh* Cases here are still small enough that they announce them individually in the paper and on tv. People seem to think it can’t get them here.

    Oh, I miss baseball something fierce but figure there’ll be no season this year.

  75. 75.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Martin: The production values on the LeMans race was really impressive. They really went all out. The other major sports are the same. All the same components – player interviews, stats, commentary panel, rivalries, arena full of fans and the energy that comes from that, etc.

    If all you want is a spectacle on your TV, that might work.  OTOH, if the actual sport interests you, then no.  Le Mans requires cars and drivers.  Sports require players.

  76. 76.

    CaseyL

    @laura: I used to watch that show every week, and I wasn’t even a sports nerd!  They always had odd and interesting events.

    WWoS was my first exposure to “Australian Rules Rugby,” with Mom and I wondering at first why each team seemed to have 60 players.  We very quickly found out why: every scrum had a few casualties.  It was mindblowing.

    Rerunning WWoS would be a hoot.

  78. 78.

    TerryC

    @Kent: Disc (Frisbee) golf is fun, inexpensive and lends itself to social distancing. With 6,000+ courses just in the US and its first million dollar pro athlete contract last year, it is booming! It’s what “golf” will mean to most people by 2040.

  79. 79.

    evodevo

    @Ken:  Yes. This.  For many years you haven’t been able to bring a horse to a show or sale without presenting a vaccination certificate for one or more diseases….and livestock officers will pull you over on the highway if they see you hauling horses and ask for your paperwork….haven’t heard any whining out of wingers about that lol

  80. 80.

    Gvg

    Guys, you are ignoring finance as if it’s not important to pay bills. Sure the virus is dangerous and we can’t have sports now, but that doesn’t mean the financial costs are just make a profit or not make a profit. It’s sort of like why Bush got convinced to bail out the “rich” auto companies, because the knock on effects of the auto industry going tits up would be catastrophic to the rest of the economy. Ordinary workers homes being foreclosed in every industry that served the auto companies and workers even indirectly like restaurants and schools. Nobody having jobs means nobody to buy all the foreclosed stuff etc.

    Sports teams have salaries big and small that have to be paid, they have multiple mortgages on stadiums and other facilities, all the employees have home mortgages, utilities and taxes, cities have expected revenues and need their taxes, banks need those mortgage payments to make their payments including lowly tellers and cleaning staff salaries, it just goes on and on. The only way to avoid this bind is not to participate in the economy because a 100 year pandemic might happen now.  It’s just like the reasons we worry about all the small businesses we support being screwed by the non helpful Republican Congress doing nothing. Big business owners also have big bets in investments and some of them are going to lose it all, but all of them have many many people around them both directly working for them or not that also need the money and don’t know what to do with an answer like no sports this year and maybe the next.

    in a modern economy, no one is really separate. The rich visible guys at the top of sports aren’t the only people involved and I think they are getting a lot of pressure from much less rich people to find a way. Food concession workers who want to eat and not be on the streets foreclosed of all they worked for for instance.

    We still can’t have sports but we’ll have to think of a way to save a lot of people. Then we’ll have to figure out how to rebuild because it’s going to be a big disaster till Trump and the GOP cult of clowns are gone.

  81. 81.

    artem1s

    @Kent:

    Tennis and golf are the only two professional sports I can think of that could easily be conducted safely from a athlete’s point of view.

    there is a layer beyond the athletes and owner that isn’t being discussed yet.  All the workers who support the athletes, manage all the events, and make everything happen.  One major league team employs hundreds and sometimes over a thousand people (if you count the stadium staff).  Even if you figure out a way for the athletes to distance, how many of them can do so without their trainers and coaches?  And that’s not counting the entourages and everyone along the way that are exposed when you have a team moving around and prepping for a game.  MAGAPro Golfers might be all in for their cult sport resuming, but the poor guy who has to carry his clubs, why isn’t he and his family worth consideration?  And the main point – TV revenue – means hundreds more at risk for every event.

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