Editor’s note: Tom Oates, who recently retired as a full-time columnist, returns today with the first of what will be occasional columns for the State Journal.

The idea that art imitates life has been around since Aristotle.

The notion that sports imitates life is playing out as we speak.

As the major sports in the United States attempt to start or restart their seasons during the COVID-19 pandemic that has caused more than 175,000 American deaths and altered our daily lives, it has become painfully clear what is happening in sports is a microcosm of what is happening in society.

Who knows? We might even learn a thing or two from how sports leagues are battling the coronavirus outbreak and, in some cases, finding success doing it. At the very least, the sports world is providing a list of the dos and don’ts in how to battle a pandemic.

The NBA and NHL resumed their seasons in carefully controlled bubbles and have remained COVID-free for a month. Major League Baseball began its truncated 60-game season at about the same time using home ballparks and has seen four teams sidelined for varying lengths of time due to COVID outbreaks among the players and staff. The NFL opened its tightly run training camps with a minimum of COVID-related interruptions, but the real test won’t come until the games, which will require travel and close-quarters hitting, start in three weeks. Meanwhile, the rudderless ship known as college football has seen some universities and conferences shut down fall football while others plow ahead even though COVID outbreaks predictably occurred as soon as the students returned to their campuses.

Surely, there are lessons to be learned in all this. The problem is the varying degrees of success sports are experiencing are largely a product of the cooperation of the participants and whether the circumstances in the particular sport are conducive to strict social isolation.

Where the players have been restricted to a bubble, undergone daily testing and had their social interactions limited, COVID has been virtually non-existent. NFL players have no bubble but have exhibited uncommon cooperation in using masks and social distancing when outside the facility, leading to relatively few positive tests. MLB hasn’t had nearly that level of cooperation from its players and has paid a heavy price in terms of lost games and interrupted schedules. The ability of college players to distance themselves from COVID is more problematic, especially now that students have returned to campuses. We’ve all seen photos on social media of packed college bars and parties without masks or social distancing.

The fear, of course, is a season or a sport can unravel in a heartbeat. All it takes is one athlete to violate the protocols and unknowingly carry the virus into the locker room. MLB teams such as St. Louis and Miami have shown us how quickly the virus can spread once it gets through the locker-room door.

But baseball games are plentiful and can be made up as part of doubleheaders. Football has no such luxury and one positive test for a quarterback or a run of tests on one team could derail the entire season.

The NBA had the easiest path of the major team sports. It only brought in 22 of its 30 teams — that was further reduced to 16 when the playoffs began — and created a bubble in Orlando that has heavy security and daily testing. There were two cases of players testing positive for COVID upon their arrival in late July, but zero cases since the 1,400 players and staffers stepped inside the bubble.

The NHL used two bubble cities — Toronto and Edmonton — and brought back 24 of its 31 teams for a qualifying round and the playoffs, achieving similar success. Unlike the NBA, the NHL conducted training camps in the teams’ home cities and had two positive tests. However, it hasn’t had another one since the teams entered the two bubbles a month ago.

The NFL has had unexpected success in limiting the virus in its locker rooms. On-field workouts in camps started more than a week ago and, through Thursday, there were only five players left on the league’s reserve/COVID-19 list. The players had to push the league for daily testing in the first two weeks, but it has worked so effectively that daily testing has been extended to Sept. 5 and could eventually go beyond that.

From the start, college football figured to be the hardest sport to play this fall, simply because it has so many moving parts. Unlike professional athletes, who are paid big bucks and don’t have courses to worry about, college players are part of a much larger community. They live in dorms and apartments with their fellow students. They interact with strangers in classrooms, cafeterias and, yes, bars.

That makes it difficult if not impossible to put college players into any kind of protective bubble, which is why the decision by the Big Ten Conference’s presidents and chancellors to forego fall sports was the safest and most prudent thing to do. For one thing, most colleges don’t have the resources for the daily testing that eliminates some of the risk for players. Besides, I’m guessing the COVID outbreaks this week on campuses such as North Carolina, Notre Dame and Alabama will eventually doom the rest of college football as well.

Of course, we will be dealing with this problem until either a cure or a vaccine for COVID is found. In the meantime, sports has demonstrated the more measures we take to control the virus, the better off we are. And while wearing masks, washing hands and practicing social distancing are effective, the most important thing is that everyone buys into those behaviors.

For once, maybe life should start imitating sports.