It’s been a definite mixed bag for me, depending on who is playing.

First off, the good parts.

The return of high school sports has brought back a sense of normalcy and routine in a year that has been anything but.

I may be a bit biased as a sports reporter during work hours and a sports fan in my free time. But for any negative aspects that can come in sports with an overzealous few and special interests, I see many more good parts. For high schoolers in particular, sports bring together different groups, teach hard work, reliance on others, goal-setting, physical and mental strength and much more. On a simpler level, they are just an enjoyable outlet spending time with friends and classmates.

It has been a good start for fall sports thus far, with teams and spectators alike putting forth remarkable effort to maintain the safety of all, with a unifying goal of ensuring the season can continue. Hopefully a postseason can be held for each sport playing this fall and throughout the school year too, whether it be with full, limited or no fans in attendance.

Professional sports have returned, almost entirely with no fans. Don’t get me wrong, watching some level of pro competition beats out nothing, and fantasy football is basically the same regardless of who is cheering.

Still, watching games with no fans is an odd experience. Cardboard cutouts of celebrities in the stands seemed cute at first, but has lost its charm. Piped-in noise is often too loud, too soft or too late to enhance the most dramatic moments of a contest, like a bad sitcom laugh track. While most games have long been viewed by more fans at home than in the actual stadium, it turns out shots and sounds of cheering is a key part of the TV experience.

High school athletics are designed to be amateur-based. Professional sports are clearly a business. College athletics are currently a middling mess.

A lack of a coherent and unified strategy has marred fall college sports. Who is playing and who isn’t has more to do with conference affiliation than sport or region.

With budgets in flux due to revenue shortfalls, various colleges have begun cutting sports. The University of Minnesota was the latest this past week in announcing the end of men’s gymnastics, men’s tennis and men’s indoor and outdoor track and field, despite the success of the programs and the modest savings it will bring. It isn’t the first school to make cuts recently and won’t be the last.

Sadly, it seems the focus is shifting away from the benefits a broad array of sports can offer athletes and a campus and toward protecting the few that can turn a profit, a trend unlike to change without major effort.

Where will sports go from here? Hopefully back to normal, with capacity crowds, overpriced food and obnoxious noisemakers as soon as possible. For now, it’s just enjoying one game at a time, holding your breath and hoping for the best. And not forgetting to fill out that fantasy football lineup.