One of the more insignificant impacts of the current global pandemic is the jacked-up 2020 sports calendar. Over time, the sports fan is conditioned to associate certain times of the year with a particular sport, but the events of 2020 have shaken us loose from those norms. We’ve seen our favorite sports have their campaigns interrupted or delayed, and we’ve seen them finish their seasons in parts of the year we’re unaccustomed to, if at all. It’s a minor inconvenience, but one we’ll probably have to get used to.
RUDY GOBERT AND THE DOMINOES
Not a doo-wop group from the 1950s, but the effect of Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert’s positive Covid-19 test on the sports world. The positive test in March 2020 resulted in the shutdown of the National Basketball Association and created a ripple effect across all sports. The 2019-20 regular season was already in its homestretch with most of the postseason qualifiers already determined. The NBA returned in August 2020 featuring 22 invited teams and played all remaining games with a revised schedule inside a “bubble” in Orlando, Florida.
The dominoes began to fall as the National Hockey League interrupted its season and Major League Baseball was forced to delay the start of its season. College basketball wasn’t so lucky. The pandemic hit right as the postseason conference tournaments got rolling, and the national tournaments at all levels were canceled.
FEAST OR FAMINE
The jacked-up 2020 sports calendar saw fans go from almost no live programming during the spring months to a glut during the summer months as the NBA and NHL resumed their seasons, while Major League Baseball started in July and the National Football League started in September. Toss in some soccer and golf and the calendar was on fire.
With hockey, basketball, and baseball ending their 2020 seasons a few weeks apart, college and professional football were center stage in November with college hoops joining in late in the month. Then the NBA Draft, normally held in late June, took place in November, and the free agency period began less than a week later. Now the NBA is planning a return in late December.
Confused yet?
SPORTS SEASONS BY THE SENSES
For sports fans, the sight of the fall foliage, the feel of cooler temperatures, the smell of the heated home, and the 5:00 PM sunsets associated with the end of Daylight Savings Time are usually signs that basketball season is approaching. And sure enough, many high school and college basketball programs began their seasons (though some probably wish they hadn’t) somewhere near the usual November start dates.
During normal times, especially in the colder climates, we associate things like Groundhog Day, the anticipated end of the winter months, the start of Daylight Savings Time, the Academy Awards, and the pollen that sends us running for the medicine cabinets to the start of the baseball season, and the NCAA College Basketball tournaments. Instead, there was no baseball until July, no college tournaments at all.
HOCKEY IN THE SUMMERTIME
The National Hockey League was another March 2020 temporary casualty. With a calendar that normally begins with its preseason schedule in September and ends with the Stanley Cup Finals in early June, the NHL found itself playing out the season in two separate bubbles in Canada (Edmonton and Toronto) during the summer months. The season culminated in a September finals matchup featuring teams from Florida (Tampa Bay Lightning) and Texas (Dallas Stars). The fans in those warm-weather cities found themselves rooting for their teams in a late-summer Stanley Cup Final series played entirely out of the country.
When last heard from, the NHL had set a target date of January 1, 2021, for the 2020-21 season (would it still be called that?) and like the other major sports, there is no bubble discussion as the players would be bottled up for at least six to seven months.
MASTERS TOURNAMENT IN NOVEMBER
This is when things started to get weird. We went through March without the NCAA Basketball Tournament and pre-season baseball. We went through spring and part of the summer without baseball. We went through June without a professional basketball and hockey champion crowned. In November, one could flip on a college football game from a choice of many, and if none without a halftime score of 35-3 was available, conveniently switch over to the Masters Tournament, normally played in early April.
In November.
LOOKING AHEAD
The jacked-up 2020 sports calendar will undoubtedly impact the 2021 sports calendar and possibly beyond. To have players confined to a bubble for an entire season is unrealistic, and with all sports leagues determined to play their entire seasons outside of a bubble setting combined with the increase in positive Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations across the country in recent months, there will be impacts felt. Major League Baseball played a 60-game regular-season schedule over two months with no bubble and ran into all sorts of scheduling problems as a result of multiple positive tests within single teams.
We’ve already seen game and league (specifically, the Ivy League) cancellations in college sports, and the National Football League has had to alter game schedules almost weekly. The winter sports like basketball and hockey will have to deal with logistical challenges as games are re-scheduled amidst a quick turnaround of contests. And after not cashing in on the NCAA Tournament bonanza in 2020, the NCAA will go to any lengths possible to ensure there’s no cancellation in 2021.
It’s amazing how the Gobert situation led to the stoppage of all sports in March, yet with the pandemic now as widespread in the United States as it’s ever been, positive cases are sent to an isolation booth for a couple of weeks and the games continue. It must be time to make the money; let’s hope nothing serious happens with an athlete, coach, or someone attending a game in person before a reassessment is considered necessary.
In exchange for that, I’d gladly get used to watching hockey in July.
Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash
