How To Survive Without Sports During the Coronavirus Pandemic
The planet is going through troubled times. Whether you think the Coronavirus (COVID-19) is the new device used for media propaganda or the worst form of the flu known to man, you should acknowledge it’s severity and impact.
The stock market, gas prices, and other industries are often affected by global changes such as COVID-19. But COVID-19 did something I thought could never happen…
It stopped sports across the globe.
The NBA’s decision to postpone the remaining 20 games of the NBA season, convinced other leagues and sporting events to suspend, or even worse, cancel all activities. It left myself and many other fanatics struggling to figure out what to do? What to watch? How will I survive?
The latter may be extreme, but none the less, it’s a situation none of us have experienced.
For myself, not only a sports fan but a sports journalist too, I felt a double impact from the cancelation of sports.
I had assignments lined up; covering the NCAA Tournament for a betting website, on-site coverage for an upcoming NBA matchup between the Washington Wizards and Memphis Grizzlies, and the Maryland Girl’s Basketball State Finals.
I understand completely it is more important to protect as many people as possible, it left me in weird space with nothing to watch as a fan or professional.
So what are we to do during the COVID-19 Pandemic?
While trying to figure out how to create content during the COVID-19, I found other ways to keep fanatic juices flowing.
Watch Highlights
This will be the most common tactic used by the sports media industry.
The big networks will continue their coverage but must rely on older content. Luckily for us, we’re blessed to live in the prime years of the internet, where highlights are accessible. YouTube is the primary platform used to find highlights of your favorite player, game, or league.
Other forms of social media like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are great for bite-size highlight content. The most prominent profile, House of Highlights, has over 15,000 posts on their Instagram page of various highlights from many different sports.
House of Highlights is one of many profiles you can use to get your sports fix. Pick a hashtag and scroll through the feeds.
Relive your Favorite Sports Moments
We all have our favorite moments. We chat about them with our friends and unite with strangers through these timeless moments. With new content appearing every day on our cell phones and TVs, it’s hard to relive these moments in their entirety.
The COVID-19 pandemic provides that special time to relive those moments.
A huge benefit from reliving those moments is catching the details you never noticed. When we relieve these moments we typically discuss the most climactic part; for example, Michael Jordan’s famous shot against the Utah Jazz in the NBA Finals. Rarely do we discuss the play before, where Jordan stole the ball away from Karl Malone to gain that pivotal possession.
Catching those little details helps enhance the ultimate moment.
Study Stats
As sports fans, we live on our knowledge of stats. They don’t tell the entire story, but it tells one half of it. Being able to understand stats is important if you want to jump in the next twitter debate about the latest sports story.
The strength to comprehend stats turns the regular sports fan into a knowledgeable one. You don’t want to be the guy who can only troll because he thought a quick google search will win a debate. You have to be able to support your statistics with other knowledge that can affect the numbers.
Who was the player’s supporting cast? Were there any injuries during the game? What was the gameplan?
These are the other details that help and destroy the stats. It’s up to you to figure out how to use them.
Find Your Other Hobby
Once I reluctantly accepted there will be no sport for the unseeable future, I needed something to do until life is back to normal. I looked toward music to fill the void.
When I first became a content creator, I enjoyed producing compilations mixtapes of different artists. Few people heard them but my friends enjoyed them so kept making them. I recently created two more for the first time in a few years and I’m planning to publish more through a new podcast, Fan-I Radio.
Sometimes it can be hard to find a hobby, especially during a pandemic that keeps you in the house. Once again the internet comes in handy because you can research random things across the board. If you find something that stimulates your interest, dive into it.
Conclusion
While it sucks tremendously being without sports, it is for a good reason. Safety is important and this is a reminder there are more important things than sports.
Sports are here for our entertainment. It causes emotions to pour out of bodies and can be the remedy for some of the earth’s problems but not all.
The COVID-19 pandemic has achieved something none of us have ever imagined, life without sports. There is no information on when the sports industry will resume, but these survival tactics will help you persevere through sports armageddon 2020.
