The Sports World and the Media That Covers It Are Struggling Through These Times
Now is tough, but ‘sports is going to play a central role in our recovery and getting back to normalcy.’
Since The Day The Sports Games Died (Or Were Postponed Indefinitely Due to COVID-19), the sports and sports media world has been in a bit of a bewildered free fall. There is now a gaping void in our lives in the space formerly occupied by the constant entertainment, distraction, cultural connectively, and conversation that was (in ordinary times) called “sports.”
Fans have mourned the loss of Opening Day in MLB. And the loss of the NBA and NHL seasons and the NCAA March Madness Tournament and the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.
“Sports is going to play a central role in our recovery and getting back to normalcy.”
Without the new daily content that we have all come to expect and rely on, sports media — both on television and online — has shifted to showing and debating the classics, the best players, the best moments.
MLB Network has replayed great moments like Kerry Wood’s 20 strikeout game. The NFL Network has also delved into its history for replay content. As has ESPN, which has also showed its fair share of World’s Strongest Man Competitions.
The struggle is real.
Last week, I tuned into ESPN to find NBA players playing each other in live televised NBA 2K video games in a seeded “tournament” that ESPN apparently put together. Scores of their video game match-ups crawled underneath along the ticker, just to complete this surreal sports dystopia. It was not good.
Earlier this week, I read that ESPN and the NBA are in conversations to create a live-over-video HORSE competition among players. This sounds slightly better than the video games idea but also only marginally better than — say — watching paint dry.
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So where is this all headed, for now and for after we recover?
Seton Hall University’s Professional-in-Residence B.J. Schecter is a veteran journalist who spent the last 20 years at Sports Illustrated and most recently…
