For $50, I could be a cardboard fan in the football stadium at my alma mater, the University of Missouri, for the rest of this season. For just $25, I could appear as a heavy-duty paper-based spectator in the basketball arena at Hofstra University, where I attempt to teach journalism. I got emails offering these possibilities last week.

There are several considerations to contemplate here. The first is whether lending my likeness to a piece of cardboard would solidify any suspicions that I am two-dimensional. You know, having length and breadth but no depth. No substance. A superficial presence.

Another concern is that, as a career sports journalist, I believe in projecting a neutral mien. I have great enthusiasm for sports, but I long ago abandoned hard-core fandom, and that doesn’t fit so well with the expectation, in the case of the Missouri offer, to “put on your black and gold” and “use only Mizzou branded attire….”

My other school telegraphed a similar form of attire fascism, specifying that all cutouts “wear your favorite Hofstra gear.”

Just to be clear: I find the whole cardboard-fan trend, as a visual proxy for having real people in the seats during the ongoing pandemic, not only is epidemiologically astute but downright clever. The inspiration reportedly originated in March with a German filmmaker and soccer aficionado named Ingo Mueller, who was looking for a way to demonstrate continued support for his beloved Borussia Monchengladbach club during the coronavirus.

Mueller’s out-of-body alternative spread like (pardon the expression) a virus. Images of ordinary folks and celebrities materialized as backdrops at games in Taiwan, South Korea, throughout Europe and the United States. The smiling face of former NBA hoops star Shaquille O’Neal showed up at a soccer match in Northampton, England. The recognizable mug of Chipper Jones, who regularly tormented the New York Mets during his estimable career with the Atlanta Braves, popped up in the Mets’ CitiField stands. Pets—cats, dogs, even a horse—joined the faux crowds, including Mets player Jeff McNeil’s virtual pooch, who made the evening TV highlights after Atlanta’s Adam Duvall bounced a home-run ball off the doggie’s photo in the rightfield seats.

One positive aspect to these inanimate audiences is that they won’t stir up the trouble that in-the-flesh fans sometimes do, the latest example being the ruckus in Los Angeles by thousands of theoretically celebrating ruffians following the Lakers’ NBA title. At least 76 people were arrested and eight police injured in that chaos.

It’s the sort of thing that has happened too many times to recall. One killed and 80 injured following the Detroit Tigers’ 1984 World Series victory. Two shot and one stabbed amid widespread vandalizing in the wake of the San Francisco Giants’ 2014 Series title. Similar trouble when the Philadelphia Eagles won the 2018 Super Bowl. Just to mention a few.

The word “fan,” of course, is derived from “fanatic.” (In Italy, soccer partisans are called tifosi—literally, those “infected by typhus” and therefore prone to acting in a fevered manner. ) Things can get out of hand.

So say this for cardboard fans: They see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Among the “terms of use” for purchasing that University of Missouri cutout is that the submitted photo “cannot be offensive, lewd, derogatory, infringing, discriminatory or otherwise inappropriate.” Otherwise the school will reject it and “will not be obligated to provide the purchaser a refund….”

Absolutely reasonable. And an added bonus is how the cardboard-fan invitation comes with a basic lesson in quality photography. Face a light source. Avoid backlighting. Don’t stand in front of a window or other light source. Stand in front of a solid colored background. If you wear glasses, tilt or angle your face to avoid reflected glare. Don’t use a flash. Have someone take your photo vertically from the waist up, standing three to four feet away. No selfies.

I briefly weighed the prospect of being a face in the cardboard crowd. It has become quite fashionable (though I personally can’t claim to ever having been particularly stylish). But this whole production of staging athletic events in empty (or mostly empty) stadiums and arenas, with bogus spectator noise and imitation people, borders on theatre of the absurd.

Of course, this is 2020.