Oh God, Are All Sports Going to Look Like Those Crazy, Empty-Studio Wrestling Shows Now?

There are few things that I’ve seen in my life that’s weirder than pro wrestling in an empty studio. I can barely imagine how weird something like baseball or football would be with no crowd. Maybe hockey would work, but sports are just different without the energy of the crowd.

Because of the coronavirus, however, we might find out what all those sports are like without a crowd. Deadline reports that Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the key members of President Trump’s coronavirus response team, says that’s how sports are going to have to be for a while.

In Fauci’s vision, “Nobody comes to the stadium. Put them in big hotels, wherever you want to play. Keep them very well surveilled, have them tested every week. And make sure they don’t wind up infecting each other or their family and just let them play the season out.”

This seems like a lot of work but I’m pretty sure that’s also how they film gay porn.

One of the problems here is that you don’t want players flying around the country every few days. Our system of sports is really a giant vector for spreading disease, but restarting sports is a big priority for President Trump because he’s friends with so many people who make a lot of money from sports.

Many different options for bringing sports back have been floated by league sources in recent weeks, but nothing official has been approved by medical experts or government officials. Baseball could be played in designated areas in Arizona and/or Florida, according to one proposal. A “bubble” could be created in Las Vegas or the Bahamas, where the NBA regular season or playoffs could unfold safely.

That’s probably the only way sports can actually continue. Find somewhere you can easily construct enough fields or courts and keep the players sequestered in hotels in the same area. You certainly can’t just be flying people across the country to 30-some different cities every week.

But it’s going to be super weird.