EDGE OF SPORTS

THE SOUND OF SILENCE

DAVE ZIRIN writes about sports for The Nation and The Progressive and hosts the Edge of Sports podcast. In May, sportswriter Jane McMa- cy, but it’s usually more disquieting the bleachers and people tuning nus tweeted that “sports are the than comforting. It often sounds out precisely because we are not a result of a functioning society,” a like a white noise machine that functioning society. This raises the comment quickly echoed by oth- plays at the same pitch no matter question: What are sports withers. It is only when you can clothe what is happening on the field. out fans? If a windmill slam dunk and feed yourself, when you’re not According to a recent Marist happens in an arena and no one is trying to stave off rampant disease, College study, 46 percent of sports there to cheer, did it even happen? that you can think about the many fans are watching fewer games. Then there is the quality of play uses for round, spherical, and ob- Ratings are down dramatically. itself. How much does it suffer belong objects. Leagues are enacting layoffs. And cause of the absence of authentic

Our society at present is not the reason is not that sports have crowd noise? Are the playoffs refunctioning. We have an out-of- gotten “too political”—a common ally the playoffs if every series is control pandemic, with a quarter accusation from the right—but be- played in a hermetically sealed million deaths as of presstime, cause the social fabric of sports has bubble? many millions more who have lived been frayed by the coronavirus. I asked this of one former NBA through infection, player. He estimatand eight million ed that the roar of people who have the crowd, and the moved into pover- adrenaline it proty in the last year as vides, improves a the economy has player’s ability by been wrecked. about 20 percent.

Students are And it’s not just learning at home cheers, it’s boos, and illness stalks the healthiest among us. We are AP IMAGES too. Players feed off of a dialectical relationship besick, divided, and tween what they decaying. By McManus’s theorem, The Seattle Mariners play the Houston Astros in an empty Minute Maid Park during a baseball game on Friday, July 24, 2020, in Houston, Texas. do on the court and the response there should be no sports. Instead, There are, thank goodness, in the stands. we should be single-mindedly fo- fewer folks going to people’s It’s a tribute to the professioncusing on controlling COVID-19. houses and meeting in bars to alism of the players that the games

And yet, the games have some- watch games. There’s no tailgating haven’t been more of an intramuhow gone on, albeit in a profoundly outside of stadiums. There is no ral slack-fest and that they actually distorted form. We have had basket- connectivity with family. Watching resemble professional sports. ball, football, baseball, tennis, golf, sports—the closest thing we have Yet resembling professional soccer, and NASCAR races take to a national language—in isola- sports is not the same as actually place with no fans, holograms for tion doesn’t satisfy the consumer being professional sports. We are a fans, cardboard cutouts for fans, because there is little appeal in long way from becoming the kind or a smattering of real people that talking to yourself. of functioning society that gets to only draw attention to how few are Yet the sports industry cares play without the stress of being in actually in the seats. little about the existential ennui a pandemic.

Sports are taking place in a of the fan, because their money Until we’re functional, it is scenescape that looks post-apoc- comes from broadcasting rights understandable that fewer fans alyptic, against the fevered, caf- more than human beings. And are watching. After all, sports are feinated energy coming from the while fewer games and smaller supposed to inspire us to think announcers. Crowd noise is piped audiences mean less money, it is about what we could accomplish, into the stadiums to give television still money that is driving the show. not sadly remind us of what was, viewers the impression of normal- We are left with mannequins in and is no longer. ◆