Sports is one of the great pastimes not just of the country, but of human civilization, with games of one kind of another dating back many centuries. They are among other things an outlet through which you can escape the real world for the duration of the event, and they are currently not available to us.
It’s hard to play a game when you can’t be near another person. Something like tennis, perhaps, or bowling, would be a possibility, but that’s about it. And for tennis, you would have to use separate balls for each server.
Not that anybody is here to talk about tennis, or the logistics of playing it under the specter of the coronavirus. We’re here to talk about football, and right now a big part of that discussion is whether and when we will be able to have the chance to watch a live event again.
So far as the Pro Football Hall of Fame is concerned, their current plans are for their own Hall of Fame Game to be the first of the year, and to be conducted as schedule. That would be in early August, roughly four months from now. Meanwhile, 10,000s are newly reported as infected every day in the United States while thousands die, some buried in unmarked mass graves when the bodies are not claimed simply due to the overwhelming volume.
All we can do is hope that things are looking dramatically different four months from now. And if it is, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Dallas Cowboys squaring off in Canton will be a fantastic piece of a return to normalcy.
“The Pro Football Hall of Fame is planning on kicking off the NFL’s season in Canton on August 6th at the Hall of Fame Game with a full and safe schedule of Enshrinement activities for the best four days in football”, a statement from the Hall reads. “If the NFL season is delayed for any reason, we will adapt accordingly”.
The first of two Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremonies, which will include Troy Polamalu and Bill Cowher as inductees, is scheduled for two days after the Hall of Fame game. Even if it may be too soon to return to sports, it’s possible, maybe even likely, that they would still find a way to hold the enshrinement ceremony, whether virtually or through some other means.
