Let's Go Crazy, Let's Get Nuts: 2020 Was The Hold-My-Beer Year

Tumultuous doesn’t begin to describe 2020 here at I Don’t Like Mondays. The year began with what we thought was a big scandal— the Houston Astros cheating controversy— and ended with arguments over when athletes should get the “miracle” Covid-19 vaccine. In between the politics of fear ruled the day.

We documented it all in stories on the NBA’s craven collapse to its Chinese masters, a definitive Michael Jordan documentary series, the demise of sports talk show legend Bob McCown and lots of takes on how sports should adapt to the calamity created by the pandemic— equal measures of panic, media distortion and political corruption.

Let’s go back and capture the 2020 moments from the early days of Covid-1

January: In the innocent days before the virus attacked society, the Houston Astros attacked the integrity of baseball. Specifically it was revealed by former Astro pitcher Mike Fiers that members of the Astros were tipped off on pitches as they captured the 2018 World Series. 

We had questions: “At the top of the list is how, in a business where players constantly move from team to team, did the players and managers of the Astros not see a day when one of their former players might lean over to a new teammate and say, "Hey, you know that we knew every pitch you were throwing to us before you threw it?” 

The Astros were preparing to be the whipping boys of sports as a result. Then came Covid.

March: As cancelled events began stacking up and public confusion and panic mounted, we asked how a media tainted by four years of demonizing Orange Man Bad could be believed on the seriousness of the virus. “Calling it a “deadly” coronavirus or describing the “pandemic” sweeping the world is in fashion. “Stricken ships” sail the oceans like ghost vessels. Any attempt to mitigate the risk is met with scorn and condescension. If you are scared that’s because the media juggernaut wants you to be.”

And as the months ahead would prove stoking fear was good business for a press that couldn’t tell PCR tests from a PVC pipe.

March: With China identified as the likely source of the virus and Uyghur concentration camps, the NBA decided it was time to bend a knee to the CCP. When Houston Rockets GM Darryl Morey suggested China should go easy on Hong Kong, LeBron James let you know his socially conscious take was a fraud. 

“The NBA— through its surrogate NIKE— seems only too happy to pay the bill for placating China even as it rails against America. How much will this slavish loyalty to the interests of a running-shoe company hurt the NBA—particularly in Canada after its Raptors Romance? Not half as much as the departure of (Kawhi) Leonard to Los Angeles.  But remember the next time you buy a pair of Nike LeBron XIII Men Synthetic Basketball Shoes that your loyalty to LeBron is only a portal to a much darker truth.”

May: Being  the world’s greatest basketball star didn’t always require BLM sensibilities. ESPN’s compelling 10-part documentary on Michael Jordan showed a warts-and-all portrayal of the man who famously said he didn’t do politics because “Republicans buy running shoes too.”

“The film’s producers haul out Obama and other political figures to gently chide Jordan for his reluctance to do #blacklivesmatter before Colin Kaepernick popularized the cause a generation later. Jordan, with cigar and what looks like a glass of scotch at hand, explains that his single-minded devotion to winning left no other distractions. But that’s the last we hear of the political Jordan.

June: With all sports suspended by the virus and BLM dominating the messaging, we wondered would the fans come back after being labelled as racists by the athletes they pay to see? “The question is how do you return to play when, however sincere you are on the issue, you’ve insinuated that a large percentage of your consumers are stone-cold racist? The people who pay the bills? Hello? What will be the inevitable blowback?

July: In the age of Trump, where everything is political, that included the people who cover sports for a living. On everything from the pandemic to the president, the left-leaning media took the white liberal guilt side. "We have the removal of the nickname Redskins for Washington’s NFL team and Eskimos from Edmonton’s CFL team. Polling clearly demonstrated that the ones most interested in this cleansing were white media liberals like Bob Costas and everyone at ESPN. You heard nothing of polling that showed just a fraction of the public wanted a change. Only the activists of political theatre were allowed an opinion”.

July: The CFL cancelled its 2020 season after the federal government denied them financing. This was remarkably bad timing for a Trudeau government that has its PhD in bad timing. It had just been announced that it was funnelling millions to the odious Kielburger brothers of  WE Charity fame. And that members of his family and his party had been paid by WE.

“Developments Monday that led to the Covid cancellation of the 2020 CFL season would certainly seem to indicate that M. Trudeau has gobs of money for dubious national projects like packing gyms with students to hear empowerment rhetoric or squandering fortunes on climate hucksters.

September: We noted that polling had bad news about fans coming back after the lockdown and Critical Race Theory. “… polling by Gallup now shows a significantly drop in opinions of the sports industry. Its positive score in 2019 sat at 45 percent, but fell by a third to 30 percent in 2020. While 25 percent held a negative view of sports in 2019, that number shot up to 40 percent in 2020. 

Independents’ views had a steep drop from +26 last year to -10 this year. Republican approval tumbled from +11 in 2019 to -35 in 2020. Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) dropped only a fraction in approval.”

October: We introduced our readers to the controversial PCR virus testing, used in almost all the public and sports Covid tests. We pointed out some very large problems that may result in 60 percent false positives. And questioned why sports leagues are shutting down asymptomatic players.

“In July, the New York Times reports, New York’s state lab identified 872 positive tests, based on a threshold of 40 cycles. With a cutoff of 35 cycles, however, about 43 percent of those tests would no longer qualify as positive. About 63 percent would no longer be judged positive if the cycles were limited to 30. Conversely, a higher cycle could produce huge numbers of positives.

“In other words, these tests produce a very broad picture of the #SARSCoV2 sample. As we wrote earlier many people’s positive samples are found to be asymptomatic with dead virus, strands of virus and the residue of previous infections producing huge numbers that have sports leaders and politicians petrified.”

October: While 99 percent of healthy people are not dying from Covid-19— and no active pro athletes dying— the public remains petrified of the virus. That led us to say that we need to have an adult talk about death and dying. “As Dr. John A. Lee, retired pathologist with UK’s National Health System, told Irish TV , “We need to have a grownup conversation about death." Covid-19 is not the plague, he points out. Not even close. “The virus is within the envelope of many years in the past 30 years.”  People die every year of something. (Canada had 280,000 deaths of all types in 2018, but only 4% of that figure will die of Covid-19)

November: As lockdowns and masks became permanent features, destroying the life people love, we suggested that when the pandemic recedes, the new normal won’t be normal at all. 

“Most fans have decided to reluctantly accept these impositions on normalcy in the hope that “stopping the virus” will herald a return to the way it used to be. But anyone who thinks the current mask/ lockdown/ snitch-line protocol will end anytime soon probably also thinks the New York Jets will win the Super Bowl. In other words, they’re deluded."

December: As a break from Covid-19 we took time to note the tumultuous life and times of Bob McCown, the man who invented sports talk radio in Toronto.  “Most of all it’s Bob— or The Bobcat in deference to his Ohio roots. He’s always been the product. He read the room and saw the need for celebrity. So he made himself one in the fashion of the big American flannel mouths like Mike Francesa, Chris Russo, Larry King etc. His tantrums and moods and sullen periods were all part of the act.

“Along the way he invented sports radio in Canada, taking it away from earnest hockey pucks talking trades to Marvin Miller discussing labour law during another MLB strike/ lockout.” 

December: Finally, the mad science of Covid-19 is now firmly been lodged in the world of sports— with nasty political and business consequences for those who don’t play along. We had two separate December columns here and here on this trend.

“In other words, the asymptomatic boogeyman used by defenders of the Covid-19 status quo is highly overrated— if not entirely fictional. Like so much of the consensus-driven research the asymptomatic spread theory seeks not to illuminate dark corners but to provide cover for health authorities who made disastrously wrong calls in the early going.

Thanks for reading us through this awful, divisive Year of The Lockdown. Year over year, Not The Public Broadcaster has enjoyed 103 percent increase in unique visitors, 138 percent growth in visits and 96 percent in page views. For this we thank you. Please tell your friends about us, and keep reading in 2021. We’ll try to make it worth your while.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx