Rome needed gladiators for diversion; so do we

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SALT LAKE CITY — Hello, everyone, from my home-turned-coronavirus bunker. I don’t know about you, but in our home we’re not just climbing the walls — we’re crossing the ceiling and climbing back down the other side.

Picture that iconic photo of Jack Nicholson in “The Shining” — that’s what we look like around here. All work and no play makes Doug a dull boy.

I’m eating extra-crunchy peanut butter out of the jar.

“We need a sports fix.” — Doug Robinson

If you find me covered with Fritos in front of “Oprah,” please shoot me.

Look, here’s the thing: What we all need is entertainment. We need distraction and amusement as much as we need hand sanitizer. Instead of studying the latest coronavirus reports and stock market graphs, what we need are … sports.

You can binge watch Netflix for only so long. A friend confessed that he has succumbed to watching “Dr. Phil.” I’m not there yet. I told him if he watches “The View,” I won’t talk to him again.

We need a sports fix — and not reruns of old Super Bowls, which are being looped on the telly now. ESPN is running out of things to talk about now that LeBron James is unemployed (I think the station has had a mandate for years stating that five minutes cannot pass without mentioning his name).

Now they’re talking about mock drafts through the next millennium and that Tom Brady deal (side note: Tom has got to do something about those awful Tampa Bay uniforms before he ever suits up; TB in that TB uni — that’s just not right). ESPN is so desperate that they’re talking about Jameis Winston and Cam Newton around the clock and engaging in endless speculation about NFL free agency (just wait until something happens and get back to us).

The ancient Romans recognized the need for sports and amusement. They held gladiator competitions in part to “distract the populace from the political and economic problems of the day,” according to Ancient History Encyclopedia. That sounds like us, plus a plague and an earthquake.

All we need are locusts.

So here we are, drumming our fingers on the counter. At this point we’d watch a bass tournament (but still not the WNBA — that’s when you’ll know things are really bad).

The question is why has the coronavirus shut down sports completely? It’s not difficult to imagine sports could survive for a time without a live audience (have you ever gone to a track meet?). How about made-for-TV sports events?

Here’s what they should do: Select athletes for various competitions, test them for the coronavirus, quarantine them for 14 days and then pit them head to head for a TV audience. Mixed martial arts officials are the only ones who have figured this out. They’ve continued their competitions despite the coronavirus by staging for-TV-only events.

There are endless possibilities.

The PGA Tour could create winner-take-all, four-round tournaments featuring the top 10 ranked players on the tour.

The men’s pro tennis circuit is really just a three-man competition anyway. Remarkably, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have won the last 13 Slam events, and 55 of the last 64 dating back to 2004. Three is an awkward number, so maybe add a fourth and make it a round-robin, winner-takes-all format.

Major League Baseball could hold various skill contests just as it does during All-Star week. A home run contest, for instance. The NFL could do the same thing.

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This July 8, 2019 file photo shows Pete Alonso, of the New York Mets, after winning the Major League Baseball Home Run Derby in Cleveland. The Nielsen company says a little more than 8 million people watched Tuesday’s All-Star game on Fox, enough to be the second-most popular thing on television after “America’s Got Talent” last week.

Boxing and horse racing were once major sports in America. Now is the time for a comeback. They could stage championship boxing matches that unified titles and pit horses head to head.

Until about 50 years ago, track and field staged match races, especially over the mile distance a la Jim Ryan vs. Marty Liquori in 1971 and Roger Bannister vs. John Landy in 1954. Why not a few match races in the sprints? And throw in a few NFL players just for fun.

Ditto for horse racing. The nation stood still to watch Seabiscuit vs. War Admiral.

The NBA could stage three-on-three or one-on-one competitions, selecting the top players in the game — say, Kawhi Leonard, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic, Damian Lillard, Paul George, Russell Westbrook and that ballhog James Harden (Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry are hurt). Note: I’m excluding James because when it was suggested earlier this month that games could be played without fans, he announced, “Nah. Impossible. I ain’t playing if you don’t have the fans in the crowd. That’s who I play for.” Apparently, he has never heard of fans watching on TV.

That will help us get through the next few weeks of hiding out. That, and a jar of peanut butter.

from Deseret News https://ift.tt/39pe51A