“The team that comes to mind is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers,” Stephen A. Smith said Wednesday morning on the sports-debate show “First Take.” The question was who would benefit most from the N.F.L.’s decision to expand the playoffs to fourteen teams. “Why?” he barked. “Because Tom Brady is there.” The rough timbre of Smith’s tenor smoothed, and the pitch began to rise. “Why? Because Mike Eh-vans and Chris God-win and O.J. How-ard . . .” Smith was warming up. “Also—” His hands flew up into the bottom of the frame and started fluttering. He spoke for a minute and forty-three seconds. What was the question again? Suddenly, he was talking about the Cowboys; more specifically, Cowboy fans, “the most disgusting, nauseating fanbase in the history of American sports,” and about how “they would be miserable. NOTHING”—here he unfurled his famous falsetto—“pleases me more, NOTHING makes my Christmas more than COWBOY fans and their sorry be-hiiinds being miserable.” By that point, I had been watching ESPN for more than three hours, and Smith’s monologue—with his controlled pacing, dizzying leaps between registers, head feints and thrusts, and relish for combat—was the closest thing I saw to a recent athletic event.
It had been a long morning. I’d read the classic children’s book “Go, Dog. Go!” to my daughter approximately seventeen times; I’d watched “Get Up!,” the ESPN talk show, and “SportsCenter With Scott Van Pelt.” I’d wanted to see how entertaining a day spent watching what was originally the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network would be, given that there is currently no sports programming to be had. Was there such a thing as “SportsCenter” without highlights? What could “Get Up!” analyze in the absence of games? Athletes golfing in the foyers of their mansions? (Yes.) The thirty-fifth anniversary of Villanova’s upset over Georgetown in the N.C.A.A. title game? (Sure enough, on Wednesday, there was the current Villanova coach Jay Wright, sporting a beard, on hand to describe the school’s old glory.)
But there was no shortage of content. In fact, there was too much news. Brian Windhorst appeared, in order to report on the abrupt decision of the Chinese Basketball Association to delay its season again, after plans had been made to resume it. He also discussed a prospective deal between N.B.A. players and owners to hold a larger-than-usual portion of the players’ salaries in escrow, if regular-season games are called off. Wimbledon was cancelled. Patrick McEnroe discussed that, calling in from his basement, where he is isolated from his family, having tested positive for COVID-19. Adam Schefter joined an episode of “SportsCenter” hosted by Scott Van Pelt from his house in New York, as he often does. I found myself suddenly curious about the gold-embossed spines on the bookshelves; after a thorough investigation on the Internet, I found that they had roughly tripled in number since 2012. Does Adam Schefter have a subscription to a law library? After three weeks spent largely reading and watching the grim news of what is happening in American hospitals and in the White House briefing room, it was a welcome diversion to wonder about the weirdness of a sports reporter’s bookshelf.
Or it should have been. Schefter was there to talk about the N.F.L.’s decision to hold the draft, as planned, without an audience, and with draft prospects sitting at home, starting on April 23rd. Last week, on “Get Up!,” Schefter had proposed stretching out the draft. “How about having one round of the draft on every night?” Schefter said. “So we have seven nights, seven rounds. Basically, it’s the Hanukkah of N.F.L. Drafts.” This bit of boosterism was not surprising—Schefter is so closely aligned with the N.F.L. that he has even appeared in commercials for its sponsors. But he sounded less rosy this week, as many of us have. “We all want to see the days where we have the distraction of football,” Schefter said. Off-season training activities? “That’s not happening. The off-season program? That’s not happening. The draft is happening only through the sheer force and determination and lack of foresight from the N.F.L.,” he went on. “They are determined to put this on while there is carnage in the streets.” The next morning, on “First Take,” there was a debate about whether Aaron Rodgers needs another Super Bowl ring to be considered an all-time great.
A few years ago, ESPN made a bet that viewers want the N.F.L., and all sports, to be an escape from politics. The past few weeks have tested that idea. There is no way around it: everything is connected; we are all conduits for money, culture, politics, viruses. There is not really a sports “angle” to COVID-19, because there is no angle into anything that is all-encompassing. There is no escape into sports, because there are no sports. But, then, sports were never an alternative to the real world. They were always a reflection of it.
Now, as the real world, for many people, has shrunk to the space of a house, an apartment, or a single room, the importance of sports has shrunk with it. Ratings at ESPN are down significantly, of course. No one, not even Jerry Jones, would say that the N.F.L. Draft matters as much as a global pandemic. And yet the draft matters to ESPN, and so there was a top quarterback prospect, Tua Tagovailoa, reporting that the hip he broke in college feels a hundred per cent. The network has begun promoting “The Last Dance,” a ten-part documentary about Michael Jordan, which was bumped up from its original première date, in June, to April 19th. The title has an unsettling and unintended resonance at the moment.
Until then, you can watch athletes play video games: on Friday, ESPN began airing an N.B.A. “2K20” tournament, in which sixteen players are competing. In D.C., NBC Sports Washington has begun broadcasting video-game simulations in place of regularly scheduled Wizards and Capitals games. On ESPN’s sister networks, you can find the national cornhole championships and replays of classic sporting events. Wednesday night, for instance, you could watch Game 5 and Game 7 of the 2016 N.B.A. Finals—and, believe me, the Block holds up on second viewing (or seven hundredth). There is a lot of sports nostalgia going around right now, understandably, especially online. And the arguments are as fierce as ever. That was always the premise of “First Take,” in fact—the question doesn’t matter. The pleasure comes from the performance of passion, and entertainment is the point.
Still, I miss the irreplaceable intensity of now. Nothing is more obviously nonessential than sports, but sports generate community, identity, emotional commitment, and all sorts of other things that humans can’t seem to do without. “America needs sports,” the Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told Mike Greenberg on “Get Up!” on Wednesday. (Certainly, Cuban needs sports: the N.B.A.’s losses could hit a billion dollars if the season never resumes.) “We need something to root for, we need something to be excited about,” he said. It rubbed me wrong. America needs more ventilators! We have other people to root for right now besides LeBron James and Tom Brady, people whose names we may not know. At one point on “Get Up!” Greenberg asked Wright to reflect on the role that sports play in society—an invitation, it seemed, to talk about how important they are. But Wright didn’t take it that way. Instead, he suggested that society had gone out of whack. “As long as we all keep it in perspective, I think it’s all valuable,” he said. “But I think this time, really understanding how important these other people are who live their lives for others, that’s what it’s all about, and that’s who we should be looking up to.” I found his remarks genuinely moving. Still, when the news becomes too much, I watch highlights of Luka Dončić, too.
