If cardboard doppelgangers and fake crowd noise don’t do it for your viewing and listening pleasure, Fox is right there with you. Virtual fans are the answer. The same technology that made us believe dinosaurs ate Newman in Jurassic Park will allow us to forget about the pandemic for a few hours and pretend life is, you know, normal.

They can color the crowd’s clothing to make fans seem like yours. They can make the crowd happy. They can make it get up and leave.

They can even make it do the wave! How fun is that?

They can also make the fake crowd hold up ads, according to Variety, which is something you could never get from a real crowd and might be fairly enticing to a network sorely missing lost revenues. But no need to worry, kids. Fox isn’t done with actual people just yet.

“Our goal,” Fox bigwig Brad Zager told Variety, “is to make sure that the view looks normal.”

Of course, that’s the thing these days. You can try to make sports look normal, but they’re not. We’re told to make the best of it. Embrace the weirdness. Probably as good of a motto as any for the resumption of sports, as long as the top priority remains the safety of everyone involved. You’d hate to think we’d risk the health of athletes and their loved ones just because we’re tired of Netflix. The good news is, we’re learning what really matters, and that’s a lesson to take as we come out on the other side. Assuming there’s an end to this.

For now, it seems more than a little surreal, doesn’t it? The NBA has quarantined itself in Florida, and it’s the envy of every other league. Only last week, the NFL finally capitulated and said, OK, OK, no preseason games this year. All it took was a worldwide pandemic to rid us of the bane of football fans everywhere. Even then, owners gave them up grudgingly. Figures. Other than locking the doors, they didn’t seem to have much of a plan for the pandemic. Hardly shocking for a league that conceded its responsibility to concussion victims only at the point of a class-action suit. The NFL didn’t have anything like MLB’s 101-page set of protocols. And at least in baseball you can socially distance.

What seems safe about grappling with — not to mention getting in the face of — a sweaty guy who hasn’t been under lock and key? Houston’s J.J. Watt has been particularly critical of the lack of detail in the league’s protection protocol, yet when the NFL proposed face shields on helmets to limit the potential spread of COVID-19, Watt said he’d sit out the season first. In his defense, unless players will be smuggling hand sanitizers and showering at halftime, face shields probably wouldn’t make a lot of difference. Anyway, the NFL, perhaps fearing one of its biggest stars might boycott, backed off. Face shields are reportedly recommended, not required.

Which is still better than the safety precautions your high school football player will enjoy this fall. If he plays at all, that is.

If there’s no college football, Barry Alvarez said, Wisconsin’s athletic department will lose more than $100 million, even after the top 25 athletic department employees took a voluntary 15% pay cut and the rest had their hours cut by as much as half. Because of these actions as well as the Badgers’ $190 million reserve fund, Alvarez doesn’t expect to cut any varsity programs. Not like Stanford, which whacked 11.

Before the pandemic hit, I had no idea that most college athletic programs don’t have reserve funds as generous as Wisconsin’s. Most operate under the same financial plan as your teenager. Every day is spring break. Sure, most big-time athletic programs are funded by ticket revenues, TV contracts and donor contributions, so it’s not like they’ve been squandering tax dollars. But would it hurt to be a little fiscally responsible? Maybe don’t pay your football coach $7 million. Remodel your weight room every other year. Leave the wallpaper. Then maybe when times are tough you wouldn’t have to tell the wrestling team, hey, sorry, you kids gotta go.

By the way, it’s been educational, to say the least, to learn which football coaches have taken voluntary pay cuts. You should ask if yours did. Probably wouldn’t make much difference in the big scheme of things, but it might save a few jobs. Also nice to know he’s in it with the rest of us. Otherwise, it could look like he’s just in it for the money, which you might remember next time you read that someone else is offering him a job.

Speaking of grudges, should the Blue Jays consider changing their first name? The season’s already re-started, and they still don’t have a place to call home. Their own country won’t have them. Think of the repercussions. If they surprised everyone and won it all, could the Blue Jays really hold a tickertape parade in Toronto?

Even with a fake crowd?

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