It occurred to me today that I just don’t feel the same way that I normally would.

Thursday night was the first game of the NFL season, between the reigning champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the Houston Texans. They played at Arrowhead, and there were only about fifteen thousand fans in the stands, in their own social unit groups, as far as I could tell from the broadcast. Continuing fallout from the COVID-19 crisis.

And, I heard throughout the day on Thursday, as different fans celebrated the pending start of the season, an excitement and almost a desperation from people who were looking for something to be distracted by. Social media discussions, and chatter around my workplace, reminded me that football is something that we usually get very excited about, those of us that love to watch that game.

I’ve only recently become excited about the NFL, probably over the course of the past three or four years, even though I’ve loved football all of my life. For me, I’ve historically been much more excited about college football.

Today, my favorite college football team will start its season, which will also be bittersweet because of the virus. My team will be playing in a stadium built for eighty thousand fans –in a stadium where my wife and I have been season ticket holders for almost twenty years– and fewer than sixteen thousand fans will be in the stands.

There are approximately fifty teams in Division 1 play that have cancelled their seasons altogether, so I guess I should just be happy that my team isn’t one of those.

But, on what would normally be one of the most important days of the sporting year, in my mind, and in light of the NFL game that I started watching last night and never actually finished watching, I am feeling like my emotional interest in these games has changed, at least somewhat.

While I was watching Patrick Mahomes being awesome and Deshaun Watson doing his best to try to go toe-to-toe with the Chiefs’ defense (the Texans need to think about the importance of pass protection a little more), I spent most of my time while I was watching thinking about the virus, thinking about the safety of the players, thinking about the fact that these players might be endangering themselves, even more than they normally do, to try to entertain me.

The whole equation made me feel a bit dirty.

I’m just not sure how to feel about sports right now.

* * *

I teach in a public high school, where the football players have been wanting to be able to play. Other athletes, like our cross-country runners, are thankful that they’ve been allowed to compete. In my discussions with some of my student athletes, I’ve come to understand that it’s something that they want to do, whether or not it entertains anyone, whether or not anyone else is watching.

I certainly can’t fault an athlete for wanting to compete. I applaud athletes who want to be able to play because they love to play the game that they play and that love drives them to want to be allowed to do what they do. But, wouldn’t a love of a sport, and a desire to be involved in that sport, drive an athlete to look for other ways to play, when faced with the reality that conditions aren’t going to allow for one’s sport to take place in a normal, regular fashion? I would think that, if I loved to play football, and my college belonged to an athletic conference whose leaders had decided to cancel our football season, my love for the game would motivate me to find other ways to play.

I guess another part of this equation, that I could be neglecting, is competition. I could certainly, if I was an athlete who burned inside to play football, get a group of people together to play a game of backyard football. If my desire to play the game was so great that I was willing to accept the consequences of whatever that contact sport might bring my way, during a pandemic, and if I could find a group of other people who felt the same way, I would think that I would be motivated to such an extent to find ways to play. But, the competition would be different, most certainly. I guess I’ve never been that competitive of a person.

I do regret what sporting has become in our society. I regret high school and college players who are being swept up in system that involves them in competition for the entertainment of others because the entertainment of others, at the end of the day, is a goal that falls short of what I would call lofty. Without launching on a diatribe about entertainment and human distraction –which I’ve done before on this blog –> look HERE or HERE— I wonder if we spent less time being entertained, we could be spending more time doing other things, like changing the world into the place that we’d like it to be.

Additionally, I think these players are risking their safety –now more than ever– chasing a dream of professional athletics, and that dream is an unlikely fantasy for all but the most talented and driven and successful athletes. In fact, unless I’m mistaken, I think you are more likely, statistically speaking, to catch the coronavirus than you are to be drafted in the NFL.

And I just can’t wrap my mind around the parents who are rabidly interested in having their children be competitive during this pandemic. I’ve heard the arguments being thrown around via the media coverage of both sides of the debate, but I think, if it were my kid, and the sport of their choice was a close contact sport, I’m not sure that I would be excited about them getting a chance to play.

This is my 143rd consecutive daily blog post in a row, for those who are keeping track. If you’ve been following the whole time –I love you and thank you– then you know that I have some significant concerns about the pandemic. I know that those concerns, at different points during this stretch, have been out of proportion with reality. I’ve been trying to come to terms with the fact that almost 200,000 people in America have died, but that the virus is highly survivable. I’m working on my mental position on the situation, as I have been all along.

I just don’t know how excited I am about sports anymore.