Has COVID-19 changed sports forever? UW, WSU athletic directors and Sounders owner look ahead

The Greatest Setting in College Football: Husky Stadium in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper)

The future of sports, just like many industries across the world, is up in the air as COVID-19 continues spreading across the country and world.

For now, professional leagues are playing condensed seasons inside “bubbles,” while some colleges are slashing sports programs altogether to cut costs. Countless questions about the temporary and permanent changes coming to the field and front office remain unanswered.

There was certainly much to discuss at a special GeekWire Virtual Roundtable on Thursday as Pat Chun, Washington State University director of athletics, Jennifer Cohen, University of Washington director of athletics, and Adrian Hanauer, majority owner of Seattle Sounders FC, joined us for an hour-long conversation about the state of sports in 2020 and beyond.

Watch the session above and read on for quick takeaways from the discussion. Thanks to sponsors Pure Storage and Davis Wright Tremaine for helping to make this session available to the GeekWire community. Comments edited for brevity and clarity.

On how sports look in a post-COVID-19 world: 

Adrian Hanauer (6:47): “For sure, there will be change from this. People love sports, and they will come back to sports. But there’s a long list, whether it’s new technologies in broadcast, the way we interact with athletes — both how organizations interact with athletes and with our fans — or something as simple as these video calls … it’s certainly changing the way we look at our business and the way we do certain activities.

We’re four months into this. There’s a balance to be struck between blowing up existing stadiums and building them completely differently because of COVID, versus, how do we do the right things to get through the next six months and year after that, and see where we’re at. But there are lots of things as simple as physical meetings across country that can be accomplished on a video call, or contactless stadium experiences where you’re not dealing with tickets and scanning and hitting keypads — those will be affected in a big way.”

On positive changes coming from the crisis: 

Jen Cohen (12:30): “What an amazing time to grow as a human being and as a leader. We’ve seen it with our coaches. Our industry is so noisy, complicated, competitive, fast-paced — it’s really hard for coaches in particular to have a holistic perspective. For our coaches, this time has really challenged them in ways they have never imagined. I’ve watched them grow as human beings in how they collaborate and how they view students. I really think it will have an impact on the way they coach and teach and develop students moving forward.”

Seattle Sounders FC players, coaches and family members celebrate at CenturyLink Field in Seattle in November won its second MLS Cup title in three years. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Liosta)

On football this fall:

Cohen (21:00): “One of the things that gets forgotten a lot in the dialogue around fall and football is that we have other students in other sports here. It’s a lot more complicated than one team. At this point we’re still looking for shortened fall seasons in our Olympic sports and a delayed start of a conference-only season for football. How we would then take all those fall sports and move them into the spring, I don’t know if that’s feasible. If we’re able to do that for football, I would be an advocate for that. But I also recognize that there are a lot of health and safety issues we would have to explore with the Pac-12 medical advisory committee because of the back-to-back seasons. It would likely have an impact on the season for the following year. It’s not as easy as people think and it’s very complex. But for Pat and I, to support all the Olympic sports for our business, it does not work if we don’t have football revenues.”

 We have to keep moving our enterprise forward. We can’t let adversity like this get in the way of what we’re supposed to be doing.

On having just some sports come back this year: 

Pat Chun (33:20): “It’s the travel piece. Even little things, like campus housing. There is consternation on campus because our student athlete population is scheduled to travel. That’s not to say a general student isn’t going to travel, but those are things going on in the minds of all student affairs divisions on campuses. How do you manage student athletes coming in and out of campus?”

On leadership lessons: 

Chun (42:30): “We’re ultimately in an adapt-or-die type of industry and we have to adapt to the young people. So the good thing for us is we’re wired in that way. The most successful administrators and coaches do a great job of adapting. Entrepreneurs and founders that are watching this livestream, they obviously adapt to what’s going on in the environment or in society.

As we go forward, it’s been nice to see leaders within our athletic department adapt and teach differently, communicate differently, build teams differently. How we interact with human beings may have changed immensely over the last couple months. But as long as we’re willing to adapt, to push ourselves and get out of our comfort zones a little bit, understanding that we all have different roles within an organization and we all have to excel at those those roles — we’re still able to get to places.

In these last couple months I’ve never been busier and I’ve never been slower at the same time. You’re bogged down with all these meetings, you’re trying to be more efficient with people’s time because you know by three or four o’clock people are all ‘Zoomed out.’ But you also know that we have a responsibility. We have to keep moving our enterprise forward. We can’t let adversity like this get in the way of what we’re supposed to be doing.”

On their favorite sports moment and what it says about the power of sport:

Hanauer (54:20): “It’s still the opening game in 2009 for the MLS Sounders. It was an emotional moment for all sorts of reasons. I was a kid who grew up in Seattle, going to the Sounders games starting in 1974 with my family. We went to every game for 10 years until that original team left. And when the 2009 Sounders started, my father had passed away recently and he was sort of always my soccer support. So then to see the stadium filled with families, with kids — that could have been me 35 years earlier. That was my top sporting moment.”

Cohen: “I would say watching Kelsey Plum break the NCAA basketball record for leading scorer for women’s basketball. I’m a Husky football girl — I grew up with Husky Stadium and have been to all kinds of Rose Bowls and watched amazing wins in football and amazing wins in our other sports. But that moment, just to see a female be that elite who was part of our university and to see this arena— literally you could not breathe in the arena with every shot. She just went off. And I’m just in the stands crying. I think it’s probably the mother in me. That moment was just really, really special.”

Chun: “For me, it’s not a game. It’s actually when College GameDay showed up at Washington State. It’s 6 a.m. and there’s 20,000 people around the stage. ESPN counts the show down and the whole country all of a sudden learned first-hand how crazy these Cougs are, that they are willing to show up at 6 a.m. just to show their love and passion for their alma mater. It’s pretty unique and special about Washington State. So just to have been here for such a proud moment for our institution, and to see all the people come out and express their love for Washington State is something I’ll never forget for the rest of my life.”

Cohen: “Can I say something about that? I was sitting on my couch that morning watching. I actually have goosebumps right now thinking about that moment, because that’s why we all do this, right? We want to unite community and we want to bring people together to be part of something bigger than themselves. And to know what kind of leader Pat is, and to know all that he had done over there to have a moment like that. To experience that in his career for the university — I mean, I was very emotional watching it, like I was part of Washington State University. I am not a Coug, and I will never be a Coug. But it really was special.”

View the original article here

from WordPress https://cybersonday689753477.wordpress.com/2020/07/22/has-covid-19-changed-sports-forever-uw-wsu-athletic-directors-and-sounders-owner-look-ahead/