Off the Bruin Path: Are you pro-postgame handshake, or against?

Let’s have a wee bit of fun here shall we.

We all know that sports are reopening worldwide and as it stands right now, fans are not going to be in attendance for the foreseeable future. It hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing, if you ask me. I don’t hate hearing all the little intricacies of each sporting event with no fan noise in the background.

The UFC punches landing. The soccer ball’s thud. The smack of the Korean Baseball Organization bats.

If no fans are there, then we’re all still in this together.

With the growing fear that the coronavirus will be apart of our world as we know it for some time, the L.A. Times penned an article that expressed that COVID-19 will essentially retire the handshake, either pregame, postgame or anywhere involved with good sportsmanship.

Okay, I can see that. It’s just common sense. It’s why we’re all social distancing. It’s why we’re wearing masks to grocery stores. We all know that.

The Times, however, goes a bit further into reasons why. I won’t bore you with all of those, but I will, however, throw in an excerpt with some of the details.

Skin-to-skin contact has been shown to signal the adrenal glands, limiting production of cortisol, a stress-inducing hormone, in both parents and their babies. Researchers suspect the handshake may trigger a similar response, which would be relevant to athletics.

“There is the initial fear before you get in the ring or on the field, a lot of athletes talk about the fear,” Givens said. “There is the adrenaline aspect to sport and you can partially counteract that by reaching out, which puts you a little at ease.”

Okay, okay, okay, that’s enough.

Sure the science behind that makes sense, but we’re talking about a handshake at the end of a game. One team just won. One team just lost. It’s as simple as that.

If the handshake in sports gets retired, I have to say that I’m okay with it. I never needed a participation trophy, and there are other ways to show good sportsmanship without hand-to-hand contact following events or even before them.

Enough from me — what about you?

Are you pro the postgame handshake? Or are you okay with it being retired by the coronavirus?