Hello! Welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom where today’s guest is… friend and former colleague Alex Schiffer from The Athletic! Alex and I met in 2015 at journalism school at the University of Missouri, and he’s gone onto become one of the most tireless sports reporters in the country. Our conversation detailed his journey from Columbia, Missouri to Brooklyn, New York and all of the lessons learned in between. We also discussed what may or may not happen in the NBA in terms of resuming the season, as well as what other leagues around the world are doing. Up top is the podcast, down below is a round up of what every major sport and league is doing to resume play amid the coronavirus. Hope you enjoy. 🤓
Picks of the Week
$12 Billion — the amount that could be lost from the suspension of America’s major sports leagues
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Job Corner
More than 350 active journalism jobs, internships and freelance gigs are currently listed, with no position posted before March 1. Companies include CNN, Cal Matters, NPR, The Athletic and Telemundo. Spread the word far and wide!
Who is Alex Schiffer?
Alex has covered the Brooklyn Nets for The Athletic since October, and couldn’t have joined at a better time with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, two of the NBA’s biggest stars, joining the Nets in the offseason. Alex is no stranger to big names, having covered Michael Porter Jr and Drew Lock, two of college basketball and college football’s biggest stars respectively, for The Kansas City Star. Alex was instrumental in breaking the news that Porter Jr, the No. 1 high-school basketball recruit at the time, had uncommitted from the University of Washington and committed to his hometown Missouri Tigers, making national news at the time. Alex has also interned on the business desks at The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.
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NBA
After years of unstoppable growth, the past eight months have been torrid for the NBA and its community. First came its feud with China in October, triggered by a tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey in which he expressed support for the people of Hong Kong protesting for freedom from mainland China. Morey deleted his tweet within hours, but the damage was done, with China’s largest TV networks, sponsors and streaming platforms cutting ties with the Rockets and the NBA, taking hundreds of millions in annual revenue with them. Then came the death of former commissioner David Stern on New Year’s Day. The man widely cited for turning the NBA into the global game it is today over the 30 years he was in charge, passed away from a brain hemorrhage. And then came the sickening news that basketball legend and icon Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash, alongside his 13-year-old daughter Gigi, and a combination of seven other players and parents from Gigi’s basketball team: Alyssa Altobelli and her parents Keri and John; Payton Chester and her month Sarah; assistant basketball coach Christina Mauser and pilot Ara Zobayan.
On March 11, the NBA suspended its season indefinitely in one of the most surreal moments in sports history, involving a team doctor running onto the court just seconds before the Oklahoma City Thunder and Utah Jazz were about to begin a game. As it stands today, the proposal that’s received the most buzz is completing the regular season and playoffs solely in Las Vegas. But it’s not as simple as just deciding a winner in Vegas. There’s asking all players, coaches and non-playing staff to spend 1-2 months away from their families in an extremely stressful time, the endless contracts and financial issues to resolve, deciding how long players need to regain fitness, and that’s on top of figuring out how to test everyone involved and how to quarantine them accordingly, not to mention the guilt of requiring healthcare workers on site when they could be in hospitals.
Some sources have said the NBA is currently discussing delaying the start of the 2020-21 season until December. Elsewhere, the league recently pushed back its date to reopen some training facilities to May 8, which will allow teams in states where it’s permissible to workout their players. Ultimately, if anyone says they know what will happen they’re probably lying. But what we can form an educated guess on, is the fact that whenever the NBA does eventually return, there’s almost zero chance of fans being allowed into the arenas to watch until a vaccine is available.
MLB
There might not be a league that will suffer more from the pandemic fallout than the MLB. Not only has the baseball season not yet started — MLB managed just three weeks of Spring Training — but the lockdowns currently implemented across the country may cover the entirety of the league’s regular season that stretches roughly from April to September. Put simply, the MLB could well be the only league that loses an entire season. Due to the sheer number of games each team plays — 162 during the regular season and up to 20 games in the playoffs — MLB stands to lose literally hundreds if not thousands of games, which will mean hundreds of millions of dollars in lost ticket and TV revenue.
There’s been plenty of chatter in terms of starting the baseball season, but ultimately nothing has been decided, nor is anything close to being so. Commissioner Rob Manfred said last week “While I fully anticipate that baseball will resume this season, it is very difficult to predict with any accuracy the timeline for the resumption of our season.” Meanwhile we’re less than a month away from a crucial date in all of this: May 31, when nearly every team has guaranteed baseball-operations employees payment through. After then, we could say layoffs like we’ve not seen from a sports league so far.
EPL
The English Premier League has been suspended since March 13, with teams having between nine and 10 games left to play. All 20 teams have said that they’re committed to completing the remaining games, but some teams including Brighton FC have disapproved a proposal to complete the remaining fixtures at up to 10 venues. The club’s chief executive Paul Barber said that his team will lose out on playing five of his team’s nine games at home, though he acknowledged his side will gain some benefit from playing the other four fixtures in a neutral venue that would have otherwise been played in an opponents stadium.
The added headache that the other leagues don’t have is the fact that the Premier League must deal with the nature of promotion and relegation. The bottom three teams are relegated from the EPL each year to make way for the top three teams from England’s second tier of football, the Championship. The process is followed all the way down English football’s many leagues, so whatever the EPL decides to do will have a ripple effect affecting in the ballpark of 10 other leagues. As it stands, no immediate return to action is likely, especially with the news that the top two leagues in France won’t return this season. My unsubstantiated advice to the EPL as a devoted Watford fan would be to award Liverpool the title and cancel everything else. 😊
NFL
The NFL is the only major league that hasn’t yet been affected as it pertains to its playing season. Super Bowl 54 took place on February 2, perhaps a month before the possibility of it being cancelled. Free agency went ahead on March 17 as planned, and created an earthquake as Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski teamed up once again for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And the league was able to hold its draft virtually on April 23, meaning so far the damage has been minimal. But that’s where the good news might end. As is normal for the NFL, the league plans on ignoring science. It announced that it plans to complete its season in full in 2020, and will release the regular season schedule no later than May 9. But the league’s own chief medical officer, Dr. Allen Sills, is not so sure those games will be played on time.
Sills has said that for there to be any chance of games being played, the league will need to administer widespread testing on players, coaches and all staff involved. There’s currently no testing being carried out around the league, and the situation across the country isn’t much better, with around two percent of the U.S. having been tested as of today. And when asked about the league’s contingency plans, NFL executive Jeff Pash said that “all of our discussions and focus have been on a normal traditional season, starting on time, playing in front of fans, in our regular stadiums." Real smart!
NHL
Like the NBA, the NHL faces the real prospect of not being able to crown a champion in 2020. More than seven weeks have passed since the NHL paused its season, the NHL and its Players’ Association have created a ‘Return to Play Committee’ (lol), whose aim is to safely get players back onto the ice. Unfortunately for them, the majority of the league is still in self-isolation mode with most states still with stay-at-home orders in place.
There is good news for hockey fans, though, as the NHL made an aggressive pitch to teams to stage the draft in June. It seems the NFL has laid the foundation for how to hold a successful draft for other leagues to follow, and it appears the NHL is pouring heavy resources into giving fans at least something to look forward to.
The Rest
The Olympics were postponed until next summer, though Tokyo 2020’s chief has said the games will be scrapped altogether if they cannot take place in 2021. Formula One was forced to delay the start of its season, and recently extended its mandatory factory shutdown into June. UFC owner Dana White is ignoring all official recommendations by staging three events in eight days in May. The jury is still out whether the fights will actually take place. All cricket has ground to a halt. As has all tennis events, but that hasn’t stopped talk of the ATP and WTA tours merging reach a climax. Golf events remain postponed, though they could be the likeliest of any athletes to return due to the solitary nature of the sport.
Last week…
#74 — Major Garrett (CBS News) on the difference between asking Barack Obama and Donald Trump questions in the White House press briefing room
#73 — Nick Rubando (U.S. House Candidate) on winning the Democratic nomination for Ohio’s 5th district and November’s general election
… This week …
#76 — Betsy Sweet (U.S. Senate Candidate) on running for U.S. Senate from Maine
Related podcasts…
#55 — Lindsay Gibbs (Power Plays) on gender inequality in sports and how to achieve equal pay
#46 — Christine Brennan (USA Today, CNN, PBS) on the history of women in sports including Title IX
#35 — Richard Deitsch (The Athletic) on how The Athletic makes money and the cost of subscriptions in today’s media landscape
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#75 — Alex Schiffer (The Athletic)