July 31st 2020

By Bob Katz

Covid-19 outbreaks among athletes aren’t the only reason the resumption of professional sports is a bad idea. As 2020 lurches towards crunch time with the scoreboard clock ticking down, Americans cannot afford to take our eye off the ball. 

And nothing takes our collective eye off the ball quite like professional sports. The whole amplified enterprise is designed to distract us. Distract from what? From just about anything. That’s the point.

These thrilling live action contests hold an addictive appeal that’s the envy of the entire entertainment industry. The power of spectator sports to sweep away the nagging frustrations of ordinary life, including boredom, is nearly magical. I should know. I’ve logged many hours. And plan to do so again.

Opiate of the people would be a grossly unfair characterization as, perhaps, it was when Karl Marx first employed the phrase to castigate the way organized religion soothed a downtrodden working class that might have been better off rising up to fight for improved conditions. But the adage gets at something worth pondering.

Few escapes are as instantaneous and accessible (and legal) as plunking onto the sofa to watch the live telecast of an athletic competition. Enthralled, we are lifted above our mundane aggravations and transported to an exciting realm where anything – anything! – can happen: bottom of the ninth, tying run on second; fourth and goal, crowd on its feet, etc.

Hey, we all need a little relief. And a case can be made – indeed, is being made by eager promoters and touts in the sports establishment – that Americans may need it now more than ever. Oppressed by the unrelenting Pandemic, the anguish of glaring inequities, and the throbbing migraine of Trumpian BS, it’d sure be sweet to switch the channel, grab a cold one, and kick back to watch as if the world was normal. 

But it isn’t. 

Across the country, we’ve got an escalating pandemic. We’ve got rampant racial and economic injustice. Encompassing and exacerbating the strife is a presidential election that is nothing less than an epoch battle for the nation’s endangered future.

If there’s any concept that gets drilled into the brains of sports fans, it’s the crucial importance of the Big Game, the one for all the marbles. The big game, as announcers always say, requires a complete and total commitment from every person on the team. The big game determines who deserves the glory. The big game must be fought like there’s no tomorrow.

This election ranks as a monumentally Big Game. 

When the National Basketball Association made the gutsy decision on March 12 to suspend its season, it sounded a timely alarm about the severity of the challenge we faced. Four and a half months later, the Covid-19 threat has not diminished and the threat posed by four more years of this president intensifies by the day. 

A return to normalcy is what the much-anticipated resumption of professional baseball, basketball, football, etc. was supposed to signify. Instead, a national buckling down to the vital task of defeating Trump and solving the dire health crisis he so recklessly fomented is the message pro sports can now send by decreeing an additional pause in the action. 

There will come a time when the splendid distractions provided by MLB, NBA, WNBA, NFL, NHL, and MLS will again be welcome and hopefully by then we’ll have earned it. November 4, the day after the election, seems about right.

Bob Katz writes frequently on sports and society, and is author of five books, both fiction and nonfiction. His book, The Whistleblower: Rooting for the Ref in the World of High-Stakes College Basketball, will be published in paperback this fall. BobKatz.info