What 2020 Taught Us

There are only a few days left in this miserable year!  As much as we may want to, we'll never be able to forget 2020.  It was a year like no other in so many respects.  Everything started off normal, then Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID and the entire sports world was shut down for months.  Suddenly, something we were able to rely on being for us every day was gone in an instant.  But sports came back, just like we knew they would, albeit looking completely different than before!

While it's easy to just write off 2020, it did teach us some important lessons about the sports we love.  In the grand scheme of things, sports aren't all that important.  Everyone knows that.  But 2020 also showed us that for people's emotional and mental health, sports are incredibly important.  And there's something reassuring about watching your favorite team play, even if it's in an empty stadium.

We also saw the power that sports have.  The Milwaukee Bucks decided not to play a playoff game because of another racially-motivated police shooting.  The reaction they got was one of support.  Other teams joined their boycott, with the NBA postponing three days' worth of games in the bubble.  The NHL and WNBA followed suit, and several MLB teams decided not to play, as well.  Then there was Naomi Osaka, who withdrew from her semifinal match at the US Open tune-up tournament (with the whole tournament eventually taking the day off), then wore seven masks with seven different names on them on her way to a second US Open title.

I don't know if any of that would've happened or even been possible in any other year.  The unplanned three-month break led to a lot of soul searching.  And it made athletes realize how powerful their voices are.  This wasn't a Colin Kaepernick situation.  This was an entire movement.  Athletes used their platform as agents of change.  And people finally listened.

Never was that more apparent than in NASCAR.  NASCAR was born in the Deep South and is still more popular there than anywhere else.  Unfortunately, that also meant racist symbols, most notably Confederate flags, were prevalent at NASCAR events.  No more.  With Bubba Wallace, NASCAR's only full-time Black driver, leading the charge, Confederate flags are now banned.

This was also the year that led to another long-overdue rebranding.  Sure, it was likely a result of pressure from team sponsors, but the "Washington Football Team" was born after the franchise decided to retire its Native American name and logo.  The Cleveland Indians will be doing the same following the 2021 season.  Both franchise realized that, in the current climate, there were no more excuses to be made for keeping names deemed inappropriate and offensive by so many.

It was an unprecedented year in so many respects.  In March, we went from college basketball proceeding as normal, to conference tournaments being played without fans, to conference tournaments being cancelled entirely, to the NCAA Tournament being cancelled all within a matter of hours.  You know it had to be a serious situation for the NCAA to decide to cancel March Madness!  And that turned out to be just a sign of things to come.

Just days after the torch relay began, the IOC did the unthinkable and postponed the Tokyo Games.  They received criticism for announcing it so late (and doing so only after several prominent countries--Australia, Great Britain and Canada among them--threatened to pull out if they weren't postponed), but, ultimately, it was the right decision.  It was the only one they could make, in fact.  There's no way it would've been possible to hold them in July as originally scheduled!

The Tokyo Olympics were obviously the most prominent event rescheduled or cancelled, but it was far from the only one!  Euro 2020 has become Euro 2021 (but will keep the name), and virtually every event scheduled from the middle of March until the end of May was moved later in the year.  But not Wimbledon or the British Open!  They were outright cancelled for the first time since World War II.  So was the MLB All*Star Game.  And the NFL preseason (which nobody seemed to miss) and Pro Bowl.

Those events that did go on did so with either no or limited fans.  The whole experience looked and felt different.  But it turned sports into made-for-TV events, which is something everyone was grateful for.  And, because they were made-for-TV, it gave broadcasters a chance to try some different things.  Some worked.  Some didn't.  Some were only possible because of the lack of fans.  But it gave people something to watch, something to do, something to not make them think about something else, for a few hours.  And that's something we all needed.

That might be the biggest lesson in all of this.  We already knew how much sports and society were intertwined.  We didn't know how much, though.  As the old song lyric goes, "You don't know what you got til it's gone."  Never was that more true than when sports suddenly disappeared, not to return for months.  Even the cynics realized how important sports are, not just economically, but for people's well-being, too.

When sports did return, they looked different.  But that didn't even matter.  Everyone was just so glad they were back.  And all credit to the NBA and NHL for finding ways to finish their seasons, MLB for having a season, and to the NFL for (almost) making it through all 256 games while not playing in a bubble.

During the hiatus, Adam Silver and Gary Bettman were in the unenviable position of trying to figure out a way to finish their respective seasons that were so close to the end.  No one knew if the "bubble" concept would work.  Not only did it work, it was a smashing success!  The quality of play was great despite the long layoff and despite the fact that they were playing in what would normally be the offseason.  More importantly, neither league had a single positive test during the entire time the bubbles were in operation.

And, as it turns out, you can still play without fans in the stands.  It's obviously not the same.  No one's arguing that it was.  Fans create an atmosphere that cannot be replicated, even with piped in crowd noise or virtual crowds.  Teams and players want fans back just as much as the fans want to be back, and everyone hopes that'll be sooner rather than later.

But, the (legitimate) concerns about whether the lack of fans would have an effect on the players' intensity or motivation proved to be unfounded.  The quality of play was excellent across the board.  And, because they had to create it themselves and couldn't feed off the crowd, there might've even been more intensity.

Most of us won't miss 2020 (except for maybe fans in LA, Tampa and Kansas City) and are happy to see it go.  The year taught us something very valuable, though.  Sports are more than just entertainment.  They're a release.  And sometimes people need a release.  So, if anything, our appreciation for sports grew in 2020.  Because absence makes the heart grow fonder, and three months without sports was a long time!