My most intense sports passion is school-based sports, which I served most of my professional life, and mostly in Michigan. My pessimism that these programs will return any time soon looking anything like they’ve looked before has never been because I thought government, school and sports administrators couldn’t figure out how to operate safely in Michigan. My pessimism has been planted in the impression that too many people refuse to take even the simplest precautions the pandemic requires as well as the understanding that boundaries don’t mean anything to this virus.
As people ponder the status of sports in the era of a pandemic, they would do well to look far beyond any particular sport or level of competition — and well beyond sports — and far beyond the borders of any particular state or nation. If you wonder what’s going to happen to your favorite sports team — school, college or professional — take a look that’s not only larger than a single sport, state or level of play, and take a look that’s larger than sports.
What happens in other endeavors — every kind of profit and nonprofit enterprise — forecasts what will happen in sports. If a bar or bistro or beach has a COVID outbreak, it’s bad news for when and how sports programs operate in the future. If outbreaks cease permanently in college towns, factories, prisons and nursing homes, it’s better news that predicts at least some sports will return to complete normalcy at some time.
What happens in one state — good and bad — affects people profoundly in every other state. As long as viral infections are still rising in one or two dozen other states, we are vulnerable in Michigan. Every effective precaution taken in other states, is part of the ultimate solution in Michigan.
The seven-day average for new COVID cases has never been higher than now in Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota and both North and South Dakota. This predicts problems for us.
What happens in other countries — for better or worse — affects us. The virus started on the other side of the planet; their problem couldn’t be stopped from becoming our problem. The pandemic was slowed and stopped more effectively in some countries; let us hope that pride and prejudice will not stop their successes from being part of our solutions.
India just established a new world record for the number of new COVID cases in a single day — more than 77,000 — and new cases are re-surging in several Asian countries which thought they had the virus under control. This trumpets trouble for us.
No matter what the smartest, most creative and conscientious people do here, there won’t be a safe return to the kind of school sports programs we remember in Michigan until all enterprises everywhere are operating safely. We really are all in this together. . .beyond sports. . .and beyond our borders.
JER
ALL OVER THE MAP 