If you love the games let’s not push the players.

I love live sports. I crave the sights and sounds of competition. And I can’t stand to watch another replay of the 2017 American Cornhole League Championships. In fact, it’s been so long since I watched sports, I will need to retrain my fingers to find ESPN on the TV remote. But as we enthusiastically hope for the chance to fill up the stadiums and arenas again without the trusty masks and gloves, we must make sure we’re doing the right thing. We must make sure that our enthusiasm isn’t merely impatience.

Michael Jordan still sells. An average of 5.6 million viewers watched 10 episodes of ESPN’s docuseries “The Last Dance” over a 5-week time span, making it the most-watched documentary the sports network had ever aired. For 5 straight Sundays, it was the trending topic on Twitter. My family was part of the audience, gathering together on our quarantine couch so my young children can get their first true understanding of what made Jordan more than “the guy who was on Bugs Bunny’s basketball team competing against the aliens.”

After the final seconds ticked off the clock in the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center on Saturday night, a mob of Florida State basketball players giddily tossed one another t-shirts and hats. Together, they’d just defeated Boston College to claim the school’s first-ever Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season basketball title, so a little bit of celebrating was in order.

The melee was quickly halted, however, as the public address announcer called everyone’s attention to the spotlighted end of the arena. There, high in the building’s rafters, a banner unfurled, revealing the words, “2020 ACC Champions.” The arena went wild at the sight.

Most of my Sunday mornings consist of family, faith, and reflection – there’s occasionally a morning car ride to pick up brunch for my wife and kids. But, this time, when I pulled back into the driveway and parked the car at my own home, I couldn’t leave the driver’s seat. Sports talk radio is my guilty pleasure and this particular Sunday morning featured an interview with a college basketball coach named LeVelle Moton. The 45-year-old has won 207 games in 11 seasons as head coach at North Carolina Central University—they’ve won their last 3 conference tournament titles.

If there’s one thing guaranteed in a crisis, it is that we all go through stages as we deal with the challenge. First, we rally, committing to come together, a burst of energy behind us. Then we realize how difficult forward is going to be and we start asking questions like “how long might this last?” Next comes a sense of grieving at the realization that what we once took for granted won’t soon return.

One of the greatest athletes I know will spend tomorrow night doing something extraordinary: at 8:00 PM Eastern, aerialist Nik Wallenda will step out onto a 1,800-foot high wire strung across the active Masaya volcano in Nicaragua. Every step (or misstep) of the journey will be captured by ABC and broadcast live to the planet. It’s just the latest of Wallenda’s death-defying walks above the world.