The Globe and Mail - 13.03.2020

B10 O THEGLOBEANDMAIL| FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2020

Forthefirsttimein40yearsofnon-stopcoverage,thepastimes

thatpenetrateeverylayerofourculturewereswitchedoff

Coronavirusthrowsawrench

intheBigSportscycle

SPORTS

Coronavirusconcernsabound:Raptorsplayers

areinisolationafteragamewiththeJazz,reports

RachelBrady,whileoverinChampionsLeague,

twobigmatcheshavebeenpostponed B12, B15

[PHOTO OF THE DAY]

| REPORTONBUSINESS

Seats remain empty at Amway Center in Orlando, home of the NBA’s Magic, on Thursday after the league suspended its season.STEPHENM.DOWELL/ORLANDOSENTINEL/AP

F

or the past 40 years – since

the creation of ESPN and the

24-hour-a-day highlight reel

• we have lived in the era of Big
  Sports.
  Big Sports penetrates every
  layer of our culture, all of the
  time. It dictates what we watch,
  who we watch it with and how
  we arrange our lives. Super Bowl
  to start the year. Hockey and bas-
  ketball playoffs to connect
  spring to summer. Wimbledon to
  kick off the holidays. The U.S.
  Open to end them. Then we go
  back to school and it starts all

over again.

For the first time in those four

decades, Big Sports was switched

off on Thursday. It is not likely to

be turned back on for many

months.

Our society has much bigger

fish to fry over the next while,

but somewhere in there, we’re

going to see what our lives look

like without live, nightly, athletic

entertainment to distract us.

The NBA was the first to fall

on Wednesday evening, putting

its season on hold after a player

tested positive for coronavirus

just before the start of a game.

Throughout Thursday morn-

ing, lesser leagues followed suit.

Major League Soccer pulled the

chute around noon. The NHL

waited until after a 1 p.m. confer-

ence to call it a day. Major

League Baseball cancelled spring

training and said the season –

scheduled to begin March 26 –

would be delayed by two weeks.

The mooted idea of playing in

front of empty stands – some-

thing that seemed unrealistic a

week ago, and seems even more

so today for the completely op-

posite reason – didn’t get much

of a hearing. The NBA’s decisive-

ness made everyone else’s tend-

ency to dither untenable.

As announcement after an-

nouncement went out – at one

point, they were landing in

sportswriters’ inboxes like spam

• each of them leaned hard on
  the postponement angle. The
  NHL called it “a pause” in the
  season.
  That seems unlikely. Based on
  earlier outbreaks, the spread of
  COVID-19 is still headed toward a
  peak in North America. Tactics to

combat it are shifting from con-

tainment to “flattening the

curve” – slowing the rate of in-

fection so that the medical sys-

tem does not collapse under a

critical mass of the sick. What

could be horrible and quick may

in the end be less horrible, but

also take longer.

Nobody’s going to be restart-

ing an entertainment business

while an existential fear still ex-

ists. If there were an option to

continue on in fan-free arenas,

it’s off the table now. Restarting

things before this is fully con-

tained would seem ghoulish. No

one is going to want to be the

first to do so.

This all sounds simple and

sensible. If you don’t want peo-

ple to get sick, you keep them

away from each other.

KELLY, B12

CATHAL

KELLY

OPINION

TORONTO