Dear Sports, I miss you.
At this point, I’m willing to watch anything competitive.
What is the last thing that you remember about sports in 2020? Scratch that. Do you even remember the last sport that you were watching? Where were you at? In my 27 years of living, I have never experienced a depression this deep.
I miss witnessing Lebron take out two of the top five teams in the league, in the same week. I miss checking my bracket to see what 13 seeded team busted it. I miss Watching Tiger Woods slither his way to a Sunday afternoon, after being behind all weekend.
Sports has been shut down, locked away, and key the is sitting in Officer Corona’s top desk.
Usually, we going through a yearly cycle. College Football National Championship, the Super Bowl, Final Four (men and women), NBA Finals, The World Series, repeat. Personally, I always look forward to checking out Wimbledon and The Masters as well. Unfortunately, we’ve been robbed this year. I found myself watching a competitive cornhole competition, really getting into it. I know right.
Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, also know as Coronavirus, we’ve been instructed to stay away from one another. However, that’s the opposite of sports. Players, coaches, officials, fans and towel boys have to avoid all contact. Just pretend you play for the Cincinnati Bengals, they’ve managed to avoid contact for a couple of seasons now.
Not going to lie, the deprivation of sports is getting real.
I’m a huge gamer, so I thought to myself that “this won’t be that bad.” I could play NBA 2k20 for hours as I normally do. I could run games of Call of Duty: Warzone with the squad. Grand theft Auto V is even giving away $500,000 every month! All you have to do is join an online lobby. However, I don’t get paid to stream. Imagine dealing with people who are exploiting the game and being toxic for hours at a time. That’s a headache for another day.
A couple of Facebook friends suggested that I try reality TV. Really? There’s true reality in sports, and nothing can top that. Tell me who wrote the script for Super Bowl LI, when my Atlanta Falcons decided to sell the bag and lose. What director told JR Smith “don’t pay attention to the score, just dribble the ball out and see what happens.”
Of course we have Netflix, Hulu and Disney Plus to hold us over. I’ve binged everything from Grey’s Anatomy (which I fell in love with) to Outer Banks. The five weeks that ESPN aired The Last Dance, I watched every bit of it as if I’ve never seen a pixelated image move. In my opinion though, the drama in sports is 1000 times better. We get real triumph and tragedy, and the setting could determine the outcome. But the best part of it all is that nobody is acting. It’s all real. Obviously you’ll have some academy award winning floppers here and there, but it’s the passion that we love.
Check this out. UFC 249 held a fight in Jacksonville, FL with no fans in attendance. Kind of crazy to think about. Fighters need that energy from fans to feed off of. Without an energetic and electric crowd, I just seen two magicians trying to trick each other.
I actually wanted to see a team based sport function without a crowd. It seems interesting. March Madness would’ve been a high profile AAU tournament if you think about it. If it wasn’t for a careless Utah Jazz player, it could’ve been possible. I’ve accepted that it didn’t happen though. At one point, I was convinced that we all had COVID-19 and just didn’t know.
Baby come back!
The NBA has just announced that the season will return. Thank God. We need something, anything at this point. As a society, we’re living in some very dark times. 2020 has brought us nothing but tragedy. The late great Kobe Bryant and his daughter lost their lives in helicopter crash. A couple of months later, the country shuts down and we go into a mandatory quarantine. Now we’re protesting police brutality and white supremacy against African Americans. 7 months into the year, and it feels like the world is ending.
Sports has been that safe place. It always will be. I miss the heated debates. I miss giving my friends that look when they make asinine statements. I miss watching SportsCenter, seeing these people we call athletes doing superhuman things.
I’ll never take it for granted again.
