Just like everyone else, we sports journalists are being kept busy on Zoom

Coaches are keeping their players in tip-top shape while we interview people from our couches, writes Ben Burrows

Jose Mourinho broke lockdown to train one of his Spurs players (PA)

Cast your mind back a few short months and many wouldn’t even know what Zoom was. Now the online conference call client has become as integral to daily life as your toothbrush or coffee mug.

For many work teams, there are even Zoom beers to look forward to at the end of each week.

Sport is not immune either. The Premier League’s 20 member clubs are regularly conference calling each other as they plot a course out of the pandemic. England cricket captains Joe Root and Eoin Morgan have already kept those bored hacks among us out of trouble with interviews from the comfort of their lounges. Tottenham manager Jose Mourinho is making sure his squad are still in tip-top shape with virtual training sessions (when he’s not breaking government guidelines himself, of course).

But it’s not all plain sailing. Zoom and other providers have faced questions over just how secure their software is. With millions logging onto online chat rooms multiple times every day, how sure can you be that that you’re the only ones there?

“Assume what’s happening in Zoom is not staying in Zoom,” Ekram Ahmed of cyber security firm Check Point says. “You just have to have that mentality. The risk is significant.”

For the NFL, that risk is especially prevalent. While almost every other sport on the planet is in a deep sleep, American football is forging on with this week’s draft – where this year’s class of college prospects hoping to make it as pros are selected – albeit in a completely unique fashion. All 32 teams will choose their players virtually, with calls between and within rival teams taking place entirely online. Each “war room” is now a living room, every pick now a click. The perils are easy to see.

“They assure me we are doing everything humanly possible and I remind them that that’s what Wells Fargo and all those other places said about our private information, so I have some real concerns,” Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh says.

“I really wouldn’t want the opposing coaches to have our playbook or our draft meetings. That would be preferable.”

It’s a brave new world for everyone. And for sport, an entirely new playing field.

Yours,

Ben Burrows

Sports editor