By: JJ Lanier

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

Well, after months of watching old games, listening to pundits regurgitate the same storylines, and reading enough Top Ten articles that even David Letterman would roll his eyes, the return of sports is now on the periphery…in a limited capacity…at the end of the summer…for only a select number of teams.

The first domino to fall was hockey, which came up with a creative approach to the remainder of their season, consisting of qualifying rounds and round robin seeding games, to determine the 16 playoff teams.

With an expected start date sometime in late July, I imagine Gary Bettman must have been optimistic- if you’re starving for fan attention being the only game in town has its’ advantages.

It’s like being stranded on a deserted island for six months before realizing there’s someone of the opposite sex on the island with you. That person may not be your ideal mate, but after a certain amount of time, you’re not going to be picky.

Then, of course, the NBA announced their plans to finish their season with qualifying games among a select group of teams to narrow the field down to their playoff participants.

One of the aspects included in each league’s proposal I can easily get behind is they are only including teams that were in playoff contention at the time their respective leagues shut down. If we’re truly trying to be safe, there’s no reason to put players at risk by making them play meaningless games.

The main difference between the hockey and basketball plans is hockey is scheduling their games in at least two different hub cities, while the NBA will hold all their games at Disney World, requiring everyone to stay in a designated area throughout their time there.

The current NBA schedule has them resuming games in late July also, and running through October.

Besides the encouraging signs the sports world may be starting to open back up, the timeline of when everything takes place means September and October have the potential to be two of the most exciting months in recent memory.

Even if college football and the NFL delay their starts by a few weeks, there’s a very realistic possibility you could have multiple weekends consisting of NHL and NBA playoff games, to go along with football.

As much as people are tired of being stuck at home now, with all those options to choose from, I bet many of those same people would be staying indoors, deciding they needed to “self-quarantine”.

As much as I think most of us are looking forward to watching again, we may want to temper our expectations.  We’re still weeks away before the first game will be played, and as positive Covid cases continue to rapidly increase in almost half the states across the country (many college programs are now announcing outbreaks among their players), it may be delayed even more.

Regardless of what you read into that, even the most skeptical critic would have a difficult time arguing an increase of positive test results would cause any league to speed up their return date.

If both leagues are able to resume their seasons in July it will have been a long four months in sports purgatory. And even though we won’t have technically been deserted on a desert island during that time, we’ll welcome the first puck drop, or opening tip, as if we had been.