For most college athletes, getting drafted into a professional league is something they have dreamed about from the time they started playing sports. And in the NFL where the careers of players so often last no longer than a few years, the moment a player is drafted and there name is broadcast to the world is often the highlight of their athletic career.

Obviously, this year that dream that so many players share had to take on a different look with the draft being held remotely due to concerns around COVID-19. Players weren’t able to walk across a stage and shake the commissioners hand, but they were instead huddled around televisions with family members.

Nonetheless, ESPN still televised the event as usual, with multiple channels dedicated to coverage of the event. And, despite the strange and sometimes awkward moments that came with the new format, things seemed to work fairly well for the most part. There was however, one big issue. Although this seems to be an issue every draft.

It seems like whenever an athlete gets drafted, ESPN tries to build a narrative about how they overcame hardship, not only on the field, but off the field as well to get to this point. While yes, that does work for some athletes like Josh Jacobs from last year’s draft who spent time homeless and sleeping in cars which had a major effect on his life, other times it feels like it is forced or shoehorned in leaving viewers to feel uncomfortable.

This year the most prominent case of this was when Clemson wide receiver Tee Higgins was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals. Because Higgins was drafted fairly high with the first pick of the second-round, ESPN had a highlight package ready to show for him and had a graphic to pull up giving some information about him. As with most of the athletes, the graphic gave some personal information about Higgins, listing his hometown, some of his athletic accomplishments and some family information.

Then for some reason, ESPN decided to also tack on a sentence about how his mother struggled with drug addiction for 16 years. That is where the idea of a narrative of hardship becomes forced. That nugget of information seems completely irrelevant to what had just happened and seems to only have been added for the sole purpose of projecting this image of Higgins coming from a rough background and how the NFL and the contract he will receive will somehow save him and his family from that.

Listening to Higgins it is clear that his mother does mean a lot to him and while he isn’t afraid to speak of what she dealt with, it doesn’t make it feel any better the way ESPN handled it. Higgins seemed to take it in stride and deal with it quite well, but the burden shouldn’t be on him to clean up a situation that could have been avoided.

At this point it almost feels like a given that when a player gets drafted someone will cue some sad music and ESPN will run a short thirty second video about how a player’s family member passed away or is fighting a chronic disease. I understand that they might be trying to humanize the players or make it seem like they are these wonderful people who have managed to overcome so much off the field, but thirty seconds of video or one quick sentence of text is not enough time to fully digest or unpack the magnitude of what is being broadcast sometimes.

If these people or some of these incidents are so close to the players and are so influential in their upbringing, then they should be given the proper time they deserve. Deaths, injuries, diseases, financial problems and criminal records of family members shouldn’t just be mentioned in passing by some host reading from a teleprompter. These are sensitive issues that should be dealt with tastefully and responsibly so the players can feel a sense of pride in what is being shown rather than having a great moment be ruined.

For many people, myself included, sports have often served as a way to get away from the things that are troubling us in real life. Whether it’s actively participating in a sport so that for even the briefest of times you are solely focused on the game at hand, or watching a sport so your fanaticism forces you to ride the emotional highs and lows of every minute of a game, sports always seem to find a way to take your mind off of everything else and just enjoy, or anxiously fret, over a bit of entertainment.

Something like that would be incredibly welcome at a time like this with all of the chaotic and occasionally terrifying news that people are being asked to digest on a daily basis. But, like almost everything, most sporting events have been paused or canceled as a result of COVID-19 and so for much of this somewhat lonely and frightening time, people have been without one of the greatest distractions. Watching reruns of classic games was fun for a time, but ultimately those run their course as there’s only so much entertainment someone can get from a game where they already know the outcome.

Then ESPN announced it would be moving up the air date of a 10 part series entitled “The Last Dance” which was set to chronicle the final season of Michael Jordan’s time with the Chicago Bulls. The series was originally set to air in June of this year, but due to the lack of live sports coverage, ESPN decided to move the series up to April 19 when they would air two episodes a week on every Sunday until all 10 parts had been seen.

Almost immediately following that announcement, the always active, and ever funny world of NBA twitter blew up with excitement from fans who had been starved of action and robbed of what was shaping up to be a fun playoffs for the 2019-20 season.

Then when the first two episodes finally aired it was as if the excitement had spread beyond the NBA’s core fanbase. Casual fans of all ages seemed to tune in to watch with the series and people within the series dominating the trending page of twitter. For a brief moment it seemed as if the whole world had stopped worrying about the coronavirus. My social media was flooded with tweets and posts related to the series rather than being filled with people cracking jokes about how terrible social distancing is or calling out other people who weren’t taking the virus seriously.

It was only a brief respite for a few hours, but it served as a reminder of just how important sports can be for us. Injecting a bit of energy and excitement into what has been a somber and dull time and allowing everyone to forget for a few moments about quarantine, money and food struggles and rising death counts.

Here is the final trailer, released in late March, for The Last Dance.

As people try to adjust to the new normal during this period of global disarray and social distancing due to the coronavirus, many are having to do so without their biggest comforts in life. Whether it’s the ability to spend time with friends, family or a significant other, not being able exercise properly, or even not being able to take some time to treat oneself to a nice meal at a favorite restaurant, everyone is facing the reality that their current life is much different from the one they left just a few weeks ago.

For a large portion of the world perhaps the biggest thing missing from their lives right now is sports. Now is the time of year when college basktball fans would be following the incredible storylines of Cinderellas and Blue Bloods who are duking it out in March Madness. NBA fans would be anxiously awaiting the start of the playoffs hoping their team can squeak into the playoffs or the cards will fall just right so that their team gets a favorable first round draw. For the football fanatics the NFL draft and spring practices and scrimmages would be right around the corner to satisfy their craving. Then of course there’s baseball, which is always a signal of the official start of spring for sports fans and would just now be ramping up into high gear. And for the global audiences nearly every soccer league of consequence would be on its last legs with trophies up for grabs and the final rounds of the Champions League would be playing out.

Instead fans are stuck with watching reruns of games from a time when no one knew what the coronavirus was, the biggest scandal in baseball revolved around steroids and not a trash can and Kobe Bryant was still alive. Unless you live in Belarus…

There it seems as if nothing has changed at all. The Belarus Premier League, as their first division of soccer is called, is carrying on as normal with games, crowds and all. Even as neighboring countries like Russia and Ukraine shut down their sports leagues and and increasing number of countries go on total lockdown Belarus intends to continue with their soccer.

On average 1,000 fans are attending each game according to officials and while there are measures in place to try and seat fans farther apart from each other, the problems with this are clear. Belarus already has over 500 cases, which is nowhere near the totals of many other countries, but is a substantial enough number that a failure to keep things in check could see exponential growth. And the Belarus FA Chief’s claim that there are “currently no reasons” to suspend the league is exactly the type of irresponsible behavior that could lead to a more serious outbreak in the country.

The physical nature of sports means that it is only a matter of time before players get the virus and start passing it to each other. Furthermore, for fans who go to the stadium, they are likely interacting with employees who are taking tickets or selling food, bumping into each other and using shared public spaces like bathrooms, handrails and seating.

There is no doubt that sports, among other things, have acted as a community healing factor during past times of crisis, but this is the one time when they will only exacerbate the situation. There is little upside here for the Federation outside of the momentary high it might get from starved sports fans doing anything to get access to live sports, but it seems like it will only be a matter of time before they get a sobering wake up call as to just how serious the situation is.

Here’s a quick video detailing the situation.

This past weekend, there was a round of protests at soccer matches in the German top tier with multiple games being paused to deal with the protests. The basis for the protests was the belief that the owner of one of the German teams is not acting in compliance with the unwritten rules of the league regarding funding. While the protests might be meaningful for the fans of the other German clubs or soccer fans in general, they are fairly benign in comparison to what has been seen at sporting events previously.

Without an audience, protests are meaningless, so sports offer a great window to make a statement. Now feels like a new age in sports with protests from fans and athletes seemingly becoming much more common. Our current environment lends itself to this with someones ability to broadcast their protest and message to a large audience in seconds via social media.

Generally most fan protests revolve around things in the world of sports, with protests against owners and management being fairly common. Occasionally fans will step into the political arena as Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers fans did last year, but usually they will stick to broader statements that have a less specific message. Athletes meanwhile always seem to take on a larger social burden, using their platform to speak on more pressing and contentious issues.

It feels as if there has been a push recently for athletes to be more than just athletes. In the summer of 2016 NBA players Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James delivered a speech at the ESPYS award show where they talked about gun violence and the then recent deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of police officers. Then just over a month later Colin Kaepernick began his high profile movement by taking a knee during the National Anthem.

Activism in sports is nothing new as legends like Muhammad Ali, Jesse Owens, John Carlos, Tommie Smith and Bill Russell have all used their platform to go beyond sports. Unfortunately, the subject of the protests haven’t changed either as Kaepernick and his fellow athletes are still pushing for the same racial equality that their predecessors asked for.

As basic and simplistic as the demands of the athletes might seem, there has always been pushback against them. Those that speak in opposition of them often state how the players are rich and entitled and are therefore out unfit to comment on social issues. The irony of course is that most politicians and outspoken businessmen would fall under the same labels and yet it seems to be less of a problem when they speak out on social issues.

As much as sports seem to be an escape from reality for some people, the intersection of issues revolving around race, class and gender are hard to ignore in the athletic arena. These intersections make it impossible for athletes to just “shut up and dribble” as Laura Ingraham told LeBron James because they are confronted with the issues on a daily basis, and with how quickly news can spread it is also impossible to ignore what is happening in the world around them.

Brief video on the history of protest in sports.

The NFL has a problem with off the field violence. Ever since the Ray Rice incident in 2014, which was horribly bungled by the league, the NFL has tried, rather unsuccessfully, to adapt a stronger stance against domestic violence. An attempt to institute a policy against domestic violence was meant to create a strict baseline of a six game suspension with the potential to add on even more depending on the severity of the incident, but the NFL has failed to back this policy up with action, and in the case of Kareem Hunt in 2018, they let a player go unpunished despite having seen a video where Hunt shoved and kicked a women until the video was released months later by TMZ.

In an ideal world, the NFL wouldn’t have to legislate against players on this because they would be punished in court, but the reality is that domestic violence is a massively under reported crime, and even when it is reported it usually isn’t taken very seriously. As a result, the league is forced into a position where it has to punish players who face an overwhelming amount of evidence even if the case never makes it into court or is documented. You are then stuck with the league office of an inherently violent sport that is known to cause brain damage that affects personality and behavior of players trying to equate physical violence off the field to some arbitrary number of games that likely won’t match up to the time period the player would’ve served if they were convicted in court.

As someone who hopes to cover sports, it puts writers and talking heads in a bit of an uncomfortable place. There clearly has to be a recognition that the player is likely responsible for a crime, but if they go unpunished outside of the league then you have to be much more careful about the language you use, and there is still some strand of doubt in play. There’s some sense that the player should be held responsible, but for whatever reason the channels that are usually responsible for that often fail to do so leaving the burden on journalists to serve as watchdogs. Fans and teammates will be more than willing to welcome a player back from a suspension, and many will be willing to erase away the player’s past if it means even the slightest uptick in production on the field.

This isn’t to say that journalists should turn a blind eye to the issue, but it does feel like leagues like the NFL could be doing much more than they currently are. If they decide to continue to step into the ring to legislate against potential legal troubles off the field, then they need to adopt much more stringent rules that actually match the crime or they will fail to be seen as being serious about the issue. Journalists meanwhile must continue to press the issue with players to try and get some expression of remorse and force some level of self-reflection while also being fair adjudicators of on the field performance.

The recent death of Kobe Bryant offered a glimpse as to the wide spectrum in which players are covered. Understandably, many of the articles written in the immediate aftermath of Bryant’s death were praising the all time great not only for his pedigree on the court, but also for what he had done off the court as a father. There were some people who were quick to point out his rape case in which Bryant pretty much admitted his guilt after the case was dropped, but for the most part much of what was written was complimentary of Bryant and didn’t bring up too much about the rape allegations. After some time had passed though, the articles became a bit more nuanced in their discussion of the allegation. It eventually reached a middle ground where gratitude was being expressed for the massive impact that Bryant had as a player and a person, while also noting his complicated past in a way that wasn’t distasteful or disrespectful to anyone involved in the case. This middle ground should serve as a template for how to cover athletes with similar legal troubles in the future, allowing for healthy and intelligent discussion around a complicated issue without taking too much away from someone’s athletic accomplishments.

Racism isn’t some novel concept in sports, it is in the fabric of every single game and is often tied into the very foundation of every league. Yet in many parts of the world it at least seems like progress is being made to at least somewhat combat the racist behavior of fans, organizations and even players. The one place where it seems to be stuck at a stand still though is in the world of European soccer.

On an almost weekly basis, accusations of racist chanting from fans or players yelling slurs at one another are plastered all over the headlines of major European sports papers. Germany and Italy have two of the most toxic cultures, largely as a result of their fascist past and the racial resentment that built up. The leagues claim that they are working to identify the bad apples who start chants and organize racist displays, but the reality is that many league and club offices are complicit in this behavior as is the media.

Take for example the headline of a Corriere dello Sport paper from early December 2019. In large print are the words Black Friday, and then on opposite sides of the front page are pictures of Romelu Lukaku and Chris Smalling, two black players who are on opposing teams, but were teammates at a former club and were set to play each other that weekend. The article also described Lukaku and Smalling as two giants of color.

The paper was quickly condemned by many in the soccer world for what appeared to be a fairly obvious example of racially insensitivity, but bizarrely the director of the paper Ivan Zazzaroni doubled down on what was written and penned another article defending the headline choice. In the second article Zazzaroni claimed there was nothing wrong with the first article, and even went so far as to compare the criticism he and the paper were receiving to lynching.

As ridiculous as it seems, that was far from an isolated incident. Earlier in the season Lukaku was also the subject of racially insensitive remarks after a TV pundit stated that the only way to stop him is to give “him 10 bananas to eat”. The examples are innumerable, and it’s clear at this point that the league and many media outlets are stuck with a racist mindset. There is no clear solution for something as widespread and deeply ingrained as this, but a few simple changes like journalists being unafraid to call each other out or make more pointed and direct remarks about incidents would certainly be a step in the right direction, and much better than what the league decided to implement.

Anyone who watches sports can see the futility of the halftime interview with coaches and players. The time frame for such interviews is often limited to a matter of seconds, a practically useless amount of time to glean anything intriguing. Making the job even more difficult is the unwillingness of the subjects on most occasions to offer even a glimmer of insight.

Those fleeting moments are usually the only times in which sideline reporters are given any significant airtime during games. Occasionally they will be tasked with providing an injury update, or will be brought in by the commentators to give some background information on a player, but even those tasks are fairly menial with little value or added information that the viewer isn’t already aware of.

And yet, the lack of purpose in those moments might not be the most disheartening thing about the sideline reporting job. Watch any game on a large sports broadcast channel like ESPN, FOX Sports or CBS Sports, and the likelihood that a woman is relegated to working the sideline is a near lock. It’s not as if the women are untalented or don’t have any experience either as someone like Holly Rowe, who has been in the industry for decades and has actually managed to bring some depth and color to the sideline interview even with the limits of the job, has yet to get any sort of promotion while her male counterparts continue cycle through the top job openings as broadcasters.

The lack of gender diversity in the upper echelons of sports journalism is nothing new, but it does not make the numbers any less disappointing. According to the 2019 Women’s Media Center annual report, only 10% of sports reporters are female. Off the top of my head I can only think of three women consistently in national broadcasting roles, A.J. Mleczko for NBC Sports’ hockey coverage, Doris Burke for basketball on ESPN and Jessica Mendoza who also works at ESPN covering baseball. Of those three Mendoza is the only one on what would be considered the “A” broadcast team.

There are a multitude of unfounded reasons as to why women have a much harder getting into sports broadcasting. As with any industry that has been male dominated for so long there is always an immense amount of backlash whenever women are finally given their shot. There seems to be belief among some circles of sports fans that women are incapable of comprehending sports terms or tactics and are therefore unable to properly commentate on a game. But, the most restrictive bind placed on female sports journalists is the unwillingness of their bosses to make the leap to put them in broadcasting positions.

It seems unlikely that the sports landscape will experience sweeping changes in terms of its demographics any time soon, but that shouldn’t continue to serve as a deterrent to keep qualified women out of positions they have earned. As with any sort of change there will be pushback and criticism, but if it means a more competent, knowledgeable and charismatic commentating team that is hardly a price to pay.