Will COVID-19 be the needle that finally bursts the sports bubble?

The article is primarily about Paul Finebaum and Mike Francesca. No mention of Voldemort or anyone else in Tennessee.
One very interesting point they make is the function of radio as a touchpoint in times of crisis. Bryan Curtis, who wrote the piece, cites Howard Stern's unlikely role as one of the voices of NYC's (and the country's in general) recovery post 9-11 and Finebaum's experience after tornadoes ripped through Alabama in 2011.

 

Good read. Thanks for sharing, Oscar.

 

Are the sports talk guys the new trusted voices? This is not as passive as the old days when people couldn't talk back to Cronkhite or Rather. Could you imagine Merideth and Cosell discussing current events because there was nobody on the field? I don't think people would have listened to them back in the day.* At the same time, the role of sports as a much less balkanized meeting of minds is standing out more than it did back then.

*Cosell and print guys like Fred Russell were very vocal proponents to progressive causes, but they rarely brought it to their sportswriting/reporting.

 

There was so much less volume of sports journalism back then. In the '60s before MNF, Cosell had a daily two-minute radio commentary on WABC in New York. That was it besides his boxing stuff for ABC. I remember going through the Herald archives when Ted Williams died, and the paper sent one (!) reporter to cover Williams' induction into the Hall of Fame and while it was on page one of the section (not the whole paper), it was not unduly long. Finebaum, Francesa and all the rest of the radio hosts greater and lesser face a four-hour bloc of time to fill five days a week. That is one hell of a lot of time to talk about anything, let alone doing sports when there aren't any. Small wonder they've expanded to talk about the virus. The virus has affected their world immensely.

 

Tony Bruno was outstanding on 9-11.

 

His legion of bros went after Peter King last night for linking to and excerpting passages from that piece on The Bulwark that ripped the unmentionable one.

 

You'll never go broke misunderestimating the ignorant cynicism of the American crypto-Nazi.

 

Ya know, I'm having so much fun watching old sports that I really don't need new ones. Thursday night I watched game six of the 1979 World Series on one channel then flipped over to watch the final round of the 1997 Masters when it was done. FS1 is showing old This Week in Baseball from the 1980s. We all get to be little kids again for a few weeks, a time when TWIB was your weekly Sportscenter. A time before Screamin' A, and PTI, and FYI and GFY. Even public broadcasting is getting into the act and running old MotorWeek's from the 1980s live on YouTube.

 

Those clamoring for sports are going to look like such huge jackasses when the history of this is fully accounted for.

 

I'm as big of a sports fan as it gets, but I've surprisingly not missed them as much as I thought I would. Honestly, playing NHL 20 and FIFA has filled that void a bit for me.

I will not, however, blame leagues one bit for trying to find any way possible to play their games once a feasible plan is available. There's too much money involved to not to try to think outside the box. That said, I've already mentally prepared to go a long time without live sports, so anything that actually happens will be gravy in my eyes.