Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the pause button has been pushed on sports at all levels. Most professional sports have postponed the rest of their seasons without a current restart date. However, other leagues do plan on resuming instead of cancelling the entire season. 

Leagues such as the NFL are currently planning on starting their regular season on time. The repercussions from the COVID-19 pandemic have already been felt in the sports world and it could continue if all of the major sports end up having to be played at the same time.

This means that the four professional leagues in North America could contain scheduling conflicts with television and arena times. 

 Freshman Brendan Law said he would like it if all four of the major sports took place at the same time.

“I feel like it would be hectic, but there would be no shortage of sports to watch,” Law said. “After a time of having absolutely no sports, a lot of people are realizing how much sports mean to them so having an abundance would probably help people get over this time of having no sports.”  

Law said, as a huge sports fan, he would have to figure out what he wanted to watch if the schedules were conflicting.

“I would prioritize my teams based on how much they mean to me, or how much I like them,” he said. “I would record other games during conflicts and stay away from social media to make sure I don’t have any spoilers.”

Junior Luke Schulte said he is on the other side of the situation. 

“It leaves the rest of the year open without sports,” Schulte said. “There are so many people that are multi-sport fans that it’s hard for people to live regular lives and watch their sports teams compete.”

Schulte said there are more cons than pros to all of this, especially for the teams themselves.

“The cons would be that there are so many different games on every day that people have options, thus it would hurt the teams and league revenues,” Schulte said. “There would also be four sports all fighting for the spotlight and all trying to be the one people are going to watch. At the end of the day the sports at the major level are still a business and need to generate revenue, and by playing all four major sports at the same time they would be flooding the market giving everyone a lot of unwanted competition.”

As a Yankee and Jets fan, Schulte said he would want to watch the teams and players he likes the most such as Cody Bellinger, Blake Snell and Sam Darnold.

“If all four major sports were taking place at the same time, it would definitely be interesting to see how programming on TV would be affected,” senior Bria Reilly said. “If all four sports are going at the same time, TV stations may have a difficult time showing all of the games because it is inevitable for their times to overlap.”

As a huge hockey fan as well as a Boston Red Sox fan, Reilly said she would have to try to figure out what to watch.

“I think it would depend on the team matchups and if it were a playoff game or not,” Reilly said. “For example, if the NHL were in the playoffs, I would probably watch that over a baseball game that isn’t in the playoffs.” 

Reilly said she thinks there will be some big challenges if all four major sports were played at the same time, but it would be interesting to see.

“If this situation were to happen, I think one of the biggest challenges would be ticket sales,” Reilly said. “If all four sports are going at the same time, I think sports teams will see a decline in their ticket sales.”