(Eds. Note — Despite a love for travel, and the earnest desire to see sports again — and to go to any grounds at all to watch matches — this blog is firmly behind the stay at home orders currently in place. I take comfort that where I watch regular football, it would be very easy to sit many seats apart in the stands … In fact, it might be the only place that’s possible).
With the advent of actual travel for regular football seemingly light years away (with super good reason, as you’ll see below) — we bring you, This Week in Empty Seats, vol. 1
EPL #1 — Abandon on moral grounds?
Early this week, news began to circulate that some EPL executives and owners were talking about the need to abandon the season on moral grounds.
Truly, the timelines for returning to any semblance of normal seem to grow longer by the hour, as COVID-19 chaos takes hold on major metropolitan areas — aka anywhere folks might actually play games.
As we saw with the hesitation over the obvious — aka: the need to abandon the Olympics for this year — there are a lot of legal and financial reasons for a suggestion like this. The insistence that the games still be called the 2020 Olympics says a lot about branding — and the legal reasons to maintain continuity.
The West Ham vice-chair’s call for this in the earliest of days isn’t going to help this argument moving forward — even if the British government reverses its stance that getting matches back on TV would help bring the country (nee the world) back to some normal.
Anything like this sounds like sour grapes, especially for teams who are close to the drop or those who wish Liverpool to stay quarantined from the EPL Trophy. There are plenty of most outstanding reasons to put off playing — especially the safety of players, their families, and team officials — not to mention the strain on public resources.
Falling out of the top flight of anything right now — let alone football — is fraught with risk and peril. The EPL in limbo will have to stay that way for a while. Just like with your airline tickets, expect to see action from the at the last minute — and only when outside forces impact the decision, so you get the best outcome.
(American Subplot #1 — See, who in America wants or needs Pro/Rel? See what that would have done to our MLS season, that we can just basically cancel now — or play on empty high school football fields in Texas in September?)
EPL#2 — Shut it down now, play behind closed doors in July?
In breaking news this very morning, it seems the next steps for our friends in the UK is to shut things down now — to advance a summer break with no travel or vacations and play out the season in July, behind closed doors.
Ideally, the peak of COVID-19 infections would be over at that point (at least until Fall) — and the EPL could safely carry this out.
Ostensibly, this would mean a shortened pre-season (or none at all) and some interesting permutations to the fixture list, should the league come back in September.
Sorting out the fixtures would run on a most interesting timeline. The who, what, where and when of teams that stay up — and how to adjust the 2021 season should the COVID bounce return with a vengeance — would have to be a big part of fixture planning. Staying on track to preserve EURO 2021 is a critical consideration. Would this mean a reduced number of fixtures? More weeknight matches? No domestic cups — but keep the FA Cup?
(Who knows? That’s my favorite kind of speculation though. Not virus timelines, but schedule permuations. May it begin in earnest … )
A most interesting development might could be the movement of top-flight matches outside of the UK. If all are behind closed doors — and on TV — it might make sense to find a place to set up camp and keep things tidy and distant. No one needs that PSG scene again, especially as Liverpool prepare to clinch along the way.
Playing remotely might be an amazing thing — if things are safe in the UK, the Championship and other lower leagues would have the ability to leverage grounds in the country to play out their own seasons.
Where could that be? Probably depends on the status of the virus map. Anywhere there’s a stadium to play in, dorms and food and plenty of COVID-19 tests … The US should have some colleges available, sadly.
The most depressing thing of all — Match Zero
When I got Thursday’s edition the most excellent daily sports newsletter from Kendall Baker at Axios, I shuddered at the report of item #5.
Going to grounds turned deadly, as a hotspot epicenter of this pandemic.
The first leg of Atalanta vs. Valencia in Milan for the Champions League was described as a “biological bomb” that led to massive infections in Bergamo.
Whether in the stadium — where ⅓ of the city’s population traveled — or those who just stayed home but clustered to watch the match on TV, the spread of the virus took off at a point when very few knew anything at all about the risk of COVID-19.
Sadness. Such sadness.
In all honesty, the broader sports-loving humanity got very, very lucky with the run of cancelations that came soon after. (Thank you, RudyG) . Can you imagine baseball stadiums on Opening Day? The bigger, broader impact of the NCAA Tournament, and its hold through the month of March — with fans in the stands, or not. The sheer travel associated with fans circulating through metro areas — not to mention the gatherings in college towns when the major games were on. The areas around Baylor and Dayton would have been crazed..
Thank goodness for cancelations of music festivals, major conferences, South by Southwest, graduations, and all of the other big gatherings set for the last few weeks and the coming months. As one who travels to conferences, and appreciates the vibe and energy (and knowledge gained) — we’d be in a huge mess.
The idea of massive gatherings around sports events seems like something that’s so far off.
Come on, you makers of tests and vaccines.
The most depressing cover of SI, ever
Speaking of empty seats, the cover of Sports Illustrated this week was a heartbreaker.
SI was my absolute go-to as a kid. I’d stock up on the max number of issues in the back catalog on every trip to the library. Despite the fact that the sports news kept moving day over day — I still read the old stuff cover to cover. Especially in those days that getting an actual subscription was a long-shot.
The most important thing was the perspective on bigger sports news and stories, the amazing features, and that back page column from Rick Reilly and Steve Rushin. But, without the actual games — there’d be few personalities to write about. All that amazing storytelling was grounded and influenced by the actual results.
The act of finding out who or what was on the cover was always a curiosity. And even now that the magazine is a shell of itself, it’s still a bummer to see this as the cover.
There were many a cover that I found at the library and loved, which spurred a run to the corner store to put down my hard-earned paperboy money so I could have it on my wall. This image is not one of them. Don’t buy the empty seats. Get the Megan Rapinoe cover instead).
Until next time .…
That’s the end of this first volume of This Week in Empty Seats. We’ll be back (sadly) next week to recap the week in no sports — same time, same channel. Goodbye for now.