This isn’t really news by now, but the first two weeks of the NFL season have made it explicit: In sports, the pandemic is over. The stands are full, sure, but that’s been the case for a while. What is telling is that the Delta surge hasn’t messed with the football schedule one whit — even as cases have surged throughout the late summer, and even as more than 2,000 Americans are now dying of the virus every day. For all the talk of teams being forced to forfeit over COVID outbreaks — opposed to 2020, when the game was either postponed or canceled entirely — there hasn’t been a single NFL or college football game so far that hasn’t been played as scheduled. (Even the Ivy League, which hadn’t played a game since November 2019, got going last weekend.) Major League Baseball hasn’t had a postponement since July 28, and that game was rescheduled for the very next day. (It helps when 80 percent or more of your players are vaccinated.) We are in the thick of the sports schedule right now — football and soccer are gearing up, baseball and the WNBA are winding down, hockey and the NBA are just about to get started — and the idea that COVID is going to stop, or even slow down, any of it has essentially vanished as any point of serious consideration. Notwithstanding some new killer variant, there isn’t a sports league that doesn’t think the worst is long over.
