Without a doubt, the coronavirus pandemic has had an impact on just about everyone. This medical crisis has created an economic one as well. It even forced the entire sports world to grind to a halt for a short period of time. When sports fans look back on the Spring of 2020, they probably have visions of that first NBA player on the Utah Jazz testing positive for the coronavirus. They probably also remember the coronavirus pandemic forcing the cancellation of the March Madness basketball tournament that takes place every year for college basketball. Fortunately, the vast majority of sports have gotten going again. This includes the MLB, NBA, and NFL. Of course, sports leagues resuming does not mean that everything is back to normal once again. In actuality, we are a long way off from getting back to normal. While sports leagues are resuming once again, game notes and prediction analyses continue to be impacted drastically.
There are several ways that the coronavirus pandemic is impacting sports. First, one of the most popular ways that people enjoy sports is through fantasy sports. There have always been situations where players have had to miss games due to injury and fantasy players have had to make subs at the last minute. Now, the coronavirus pandemic has forced the postponement of entire games sometimes to the next week. This completely derails fantasy lineups for numerous players all over the world. Then, there is some question whether these games will even be rescheduled once again.
In addition, picking sports matchup winners is a challenge as well. Even if a game does happen, there could be situations where key players are forced to miss games because they tested positive for the virus or they were found to be involved through contact tracing. Therefore, some people are wondering if there should be an asterisk for the entire season due to the way that everything is being handled. Every sports league is handling the coronavirus pandemic a little bit differently, creating a fog around how much stock people should be putting in these results.
Finally, when it comes to college sports, these issues are even bigger. In the professional world, many sports leagues are closely controlling and monitoring what their players are doing. In college, it is harder to do that. Players are not paid and they still need to go to class. As a result, the NCAA football season has been gutted by the coronavirus pandemic. There are some who believe that the basketball season may face the same fate.
The coronavirus pandemic is going to be with us until we have a vaccine. The NBA is gearing up for its second season that is going to be impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. MLB will likely start in the Spring being impacted as well. Therefore, it is important for everyone to be patient and be ready for the vaccine once it comes available. Only with a vaccine will everything truly go back to normal.