Sports Mean Everything Until They Mean Nothing

When I went a full day without checking any scores, I knew nothing would ever be the same.

I was in Boston on the first weekend of March for a work conference when I found out our hotel was the site of the infamous Biogen conference that was an early “super spreader” event of coronavirus.

From that Friday afternoon until I got to an eerily empty Logan Airport the next day to travel home, I did not check a sports score. I forgot the Mountain West Conference tournament was going on. I didn’t know how LeBron or the Islanders were doing. I forgot where the PGA Tour was that weekend.

Instead, my phone time was spent on learning everything I could about covid19. While I had been aware of its looming arrival as international soccer and Japanese wrestling had begun canceling events, I foolishly had not paid enough attention. When I saw Trump’s disgusting press conference from the CDC in Atlanta on that same Friday, I knew we were all screwed.

From that moment on, sports became incredibly unimportant. How could they? We had so many more important things to deal with. I wrote previously about how good leaders made great decisions in canceling sporting events early on, only to be met with protests and derision. Those decisions, in hindsight, may have saved lives. Those protesters and detractors, I…