Moore: Navigating a world without sports comes with a lot of 2nd guesses

How did your first weekend go without sports? Maybe you realize there are far greater concerns than not having a Selection Sunday for the NCAA Tournament. Or maybe you understand those concerns but still missed a weekend filled with bouncing balls on golf courses, baseball fields and basketball courts.

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I didn’t miss watching sports as much as I thought I would. I’m sure I will as time goes on during the coronavirus crisis. If I had to pick one thing I missed the most, it was Selection Sunday and the fallout from that with questions about teams that made it, teams that didn’t and how I planned to fill out my bracket, trying to predict a handful of upsets and who would be the eventual champion.

But all of us are just fans who would have watched the games. Imagine being a senior on one of those NCAA Tournament teams, having your final sensational season end as abruptly and strangely as it did.

I guess I’ll always wonder how far the Cougs would have gone in the Pac-12 Tournament after winning their opener against Colorado Wednesday night. In my mind, they were coming together and it wasn’t that hard to imagine them beating Arizona State and UCLA and perhaps making a shocking appearance in the championship game against Oregon or someone else.

Then again, they ended the season in victorious fashion, snapping a 10-game losing streak in the conference tournament.

How did you spend time that you would have otherwise spent watching a game or tournament on TV? I made jerky and took walks through the snow on Cougar Mountain with my wife and dog. I also hit balls and chipped and putted at the Golf Club at Newcastle and ended up wondering if I should have been doing that.

Earlier on Sunday I tweeted that the weather forecast is nice for the coming week, and maybe you’d like to take advantage of that by playing golf at Druid’s Glen, a sponsor on 710 ESPN Seattle. But I heard from someone who couldn’t believe I was advocating a round of golf during the crisis. So that made me second-guess myself. I thought a round of golf at Druid’s Glen or anywhere would be OK. You’re with three others in a foursome at most. You check in at the pro shop and you’re on your way. Seems like it would involve limited contact with others, but maybe I’m wrong about that. Or at least it got me to thinking I might be way off-base.

I don’t even know what to think about anything anymore. Last Monday night I went to Planet Fitness and didn’t think much about it when I got on the stair machine. Then on Wednesday I went back and started to wonder if I should be at a gym at all. And now gyms have been closed along with restaurants and bars.

On Saturday night, I don’t want to call it eerie, but it was weird to go to a sports bar in Issaquah and see a smattering of customers there. On a normal Saturday night at Malarky’s, the place would have been humming with activity and big games on the flat screens. On this night there were games on, but none of them were live. And on one screen in the corner, there were cat videos being shown for awhile. It made my wife and I think that we shouldn’t be eating out at all.

As a sports-talk show host, I’m glad the NFL is conducting business as usual this week. But should it be? I get it, they can negotiate contracts and make deals in free agency without making personal contact, but doesn’t it still look bad in some respects when every other professional league has shut down?

My kids are 15, old enough to understand why things have temporarily changed in such a drastic way. They’re also happy right now that they don’t have to go to school until April 27. But when does that happiness change to boredom? When will the next game of Fortnite be so ho-hum they don’t want to play it anymore?

My wife and I are formulating a game plan to keep them busy, to put them to work, to get them to read, to do something other than play video games all day long.

They do miss playing on the junior varsity baseball team at Issaquah High, but they’re sophomores who have two years left. I feel bad for the seniors, most of whom are suddenly done with organized sports. But my wife and I have it better than parents of younger kids who need baby sitters or day care. I can’t imagine how crammed day-care operations are now. For many it’s an unforeseen added expense to the monthly budget.

No one knows what to expect. Right when you don’t think things could get worse, they do. All we can do is hope for the best while deferring to the health experts and following what they’re telling us to do.

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