Essay talk:Sports & Covid-19

In essay space this is fine, but I'm not convinced this article is warranted per our mission--Hastur! (talk) 20:02, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Make a Reservation} 20:06, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

If you're (whomever this is) going to make an article about sportevents when COVID-19 broke out, shouldn't you also be mentioning that France (Ligue 1) & The Netherlands (Eredivisie) ended their competitions? Gunther1987 (talk) 21:04, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Feel free to add the details of that, I'm American based and mostly follow NBA and EPL, so if you have insight into other countries leagues I'm interested.

@DuceMoosolini@Hastur I've always struggled with how to connect sports with this platform, considering that sport is so ubiquitous to society and filled with weird traditions and superstition. I thought this would be an interesting lens to examine it. What am I missing?RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:57, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

This is probably the best example of missional sports writing (and frankly not great because the article really waxes about stuff not relevant to us). Maybe stuff about steroids and how some might claim they're harmless--Hastur! (talk) 23:11, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

I mean the financial consequences are massive. NCAA college football alone generates around $3 Billion in revenue, which is central to why they want to have a season this year. At the University of Oregon, football is 70% of it's revenue, much of that coming from ticket sales. Absent that, the PAC-12 figures to lose hundreds of millions of dollars from TV deals. All of this is on the backs of majority Black athletes to support the entire collegiate system. Isn't that worth exploring, the exploitation of Black bodies for profit in a system that doesn't value them beyond their on field performance?RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:19, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

The last bit, maybe--Hastur! (talk) 23:24, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Or as sports reflect society, the rush by owners to restart seasons to save revenue, at the expense of their players health? Is there any better descriptor of the American failure to contain Covid?RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:32, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Start with this, and bear in mind that almost anything goes in essay and funspace, and that wikilinking to essay and funspace from mainspace is fine assuming it's nothing too crazy

1. Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement;
2. Documenting the full range of crank ideas;
3. Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism;
4. Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media.

--Hastur! (talk) 23:58, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

1. Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement --> Authoritarians and dictators have utilized sport as a tool to indicate that that pandemic is under control when it isn't, professional leagues aren't using actual scientists to build their protocols to return, and the NCAA is actively trying to hide infections while silencing athletes from speaking about their concerns.
2. Documenting the full range of crank ideas --> If you aren't familiar, baseball is literally filled with men who wear necklaces, bracelets and follow weird rituals in the hopes that it will give them an advantage over other players. The NBA has four players in the bubble right now that are Covid skeptics, including one that walks around with a hole in their mask.
3. Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism --> pretty sure you could do a deep dive into every college football team in the south.
4. Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the media --> Sports media is among the most scrutinized, receiving backlash from fans who read them and players who they cover, and currently they have been under assault for simply pointing out that returning to any sort of normal is impossible, which has garnered reactions that they don't actually want sports to return.

And that's just Covid.RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:22, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

We can put it to a vote if you really don't want it in essay space. Personally I don't mind linking to it from mainspace wherever it comes up. Might even be worth considering have a web crawler mark it so that it shows up on searches (assuming essays don't already do that)--Hastur! (talk) 00:01, 11 August 2020 (UTC)