Moving the Chains: False Start

By Scott Ludwig, [email protected]

Back in 2020 when Covid was ravaging the country, it was business as usual in the world of sports.  The show, as they say, must go on.

And it did.  Sort of.  

Major League baseball games were played in stadiums with cutout figures lining the seats posing as fans.  NBA games were played inside of a bubble.  The Masters was delayed for seven months; the Summer Olympics for an entire year.  

But the show somehow managed to go on.  Simply because it just had to.  After all:  

• Major League Baseball team owners couldn’t justify paying their multi-million dollar players to stay home sitting on their $10,000 sofas.   

• The National Football League, although it had enough sense to cancel their preseason games, still had to keep their billion dollar corporate sponsors happy.  So the regular season, despite a few bumps along the way, played a full schedule of games and crowned a Super Bowl champion for the LV time (Tampa Bay, giving quarterback Tom Brady his 7^th ring).    

• And, heaven forbid, LeBron couldn’t go another season without winning an NBA title. Which is exactly what happened for King James and the Lakers: at the ESPN Complex in Florida, the aforementioned ‘bubble.’

I said it back then and I’ll say it again now: there are more important things in the country than sports.  And in 2020, it seems to me that the lives of more than 300 million Americans should have been enough to prove my point.

But that wasn’t the case at all.  Because it’s sports.  And the show must go on.

Which is why this year’s Sugar Bowl in New Orleans was played, albeit a little more than 19 hours after its originally scheduled kickoff for 8:45 p.m. EST on January 1.   

Postponing it was the least they could do after what happened on Bourbon Street the morning of January 1^st – about a mile from where the game between Georgia and Notre Dame would be played later that night.

Because on the first day of a brand new year, that’s when a man deliberately drove his truck into a crowd in the French Quarter, resulting in the deaths of 15 people and causing injuries to dozens more.

Was the ‘delay of game’ warranted?   At the very least, yes: the safety of thousands and thousands of people was at stake.      

But was it enough?  Best case, the jury is still out.

Throughout history, there have been many times when circumstances dictated that athletic competitions or events be delayed – and in some cases, canceled – for one reason or another.  For some, like this year’s Sugar Bowl, it wasn’t postponed for very long.  For others, well, one might say they never really recovered.     

• World War I forced the cancellation of many of the 2016 Summer Olympics.  Surprisingly, the NFL and college football carried on during World War II, despite a dearth of talent on their rosters since many of their players were otherwise occupied supporting the war effort.    

• The NBA and the NHL canceled its games on the day JFK was assassinated (11/22/63), but resumed action that weekend.  College football teams were given the discretion to make their own decision; some schools rescheduled their games while others played.  The AFL (American Football League, which later merged with the NFL) rescheduled, while the NFL went about business as usual – a decision that then-Commissioner Pete Rozelle later regretted making.

• There were two horrific plane crashes involving college football teams in 1970: Wichita State lost 9 players on October 2, and Marshall lost 37 players on November 14 – which remains the deadliest tragedy to affect a single sports program in US history.  Following the crash, Marshall cancelled its remaining games in the season.  The surviving members of the Wichita State team, however, voted 76 – 1 in favor of playing out the season.  

• During the Los Angeles riots (3/29 – 5/4/92), the LA Dodgers cancelled four home games, while the Lakers moved their scheduled home games to other cities.  Otherwise, around the country it was business as usual.    

• The attacks of 9/11 (2001) delayed MLB, NFL, and college football games for one week.  Games originally scheduled the weekend of 9/11 were moved to the end of the respective regular seasons.  For some reason the phrase ‘nothing to see here; move along’ comes to mind.

• Hurricane Katrina (8/23 – 8/31/05) left the Superdome (where this year’s Sugar Bowl was played) and Tulane without a home venue.  The New Orleans Saints played their home games that year at LSU’s Tiger Stadium and the San Antonio Alamodome.  Tulane played all of its games on the road.   

• Covid forced the cancellation of the 2020 New York City Marathon, although many runners opted to run the course on the designated day of the race regardless.  Eight years earlier, NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg cancelled the marathon less than 48 hours before it was due to start because of the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.  

• This one was sort of surprising.  When Damar Hamlin collapsed in a Monday night NFL game in 2023, the competing teams – Hamlin’s Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals – agreed to suspend play and resume the game at a later date.  Personally, I thought kudos were in order; the majority of NFL fans felt the same way.  There were others, of course, who thought otherwise.  (Cut to a certain ex-president: ‘there were very fine people on both sides.’)

So you be the judge and decide whether these events should have been postponed or cancelled, or even if – in lieu of the circumstances – there was sufficient reason to have held them at all.

It’s a tough choice, so here’s a fictitious example to help you decide which side of the fence you might be on: 

Imagine you’re watching your favorite NFL team and their star receiver catches a pass

 across the middle of the field.  He is immediately tackled by an opposing defensive back, 

who rams into him with the velocity of a freight train, causing the receiver 

to fall to the ground and lie motionless.

Do you:

1. Hope and pray he’s OK, or
2. Hope and pray he made the first down?

Whatever option you selected, just remember: there are very fine people on both sides.

Scott Ludwig lives, runs, and walks in Senoia.  His latest compilation of 101 columns, ‘Southern Accent’, complements ‘Southern Charm,’ ‘Southern Comfort,’ and ‘Southern Hospitality,’ his first three compilations.  Other books in his Southern Exposure series include ‘Finding the Words,’ ‘Portraits of the South,’ and ‘let me tell you a funny story.’  All of his books can be found on his author page on Amazon.