Matthew Soderberg | Sports Writer
Live sports in America have been gone for 12 days. It is a barren landscape in the industry, but there are at least a couple of notes to be optimistic about.
Good News
The new NFL league year began without a hitch last week. A strong quarterback market has been bubbly, and two of the best 10 wide receivers in the country were traded. Now, being from Houston, a few of those things aren’t great for me, but activity is activity.
The All-American lists in both men’s and women’s basketball came out, and Baylor is well represented. One Bear and three Lady Bears were honored, while Mark Vital and DiDi Richards were both named finalists for Defensive Player of the Year.
NBA owners are optimistic they’ll be able to start the league back up and resume this season without harming next year, according to an ESPN report.
With all their programming holes, networks are turning to classic games to fill time. Kentucky-Duke from 1992 was on a few days ago, and I briefly forgot live sports are off for the time being. It also means ESPN’s huge Michael Jordan documentary slated to come out in June is now being pushed up to mid-April.
Finally, after ESPN1660 let go three Centex legends, David Smoak, Paul Catalina and Craig Smoak were picked up by SicEm365 for a new radio show. We here at the Baylor Lariat know they will continue to produce great work alongside the SicEm365 team.
Bad News
It’s looking like the Olympics are going to be postponed. No one knows for how long, but they probably won’t happen this summer at the least. Baylor has several student-athletes and former student-athletes who would have had a good shot competing in Tokyo, and who knows what this may do to their outlook in the future.
Chris Sale is undergoing Tommy John surgery, further crippling a Red Sox team that won the title just two seasons ago.
The NBA has 14 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and that number probably won’t be falling soon. The clock is on for when live sports will come back, but it’s likely to be a lengthy wait.
Awesome Stuff
Australian Rules Football. That’s it. That’s the tweet.
I want to sincerely thank Pat McAfee for introducing the sport, and I want to thank Australians for being the wackiest athletic organizers known to man.
I don’t get it at all. I don’t understand the scoring or why it is different or where they came up with the idea for such a large field, but it’s better than any other live sport available at the moment.
