OK, so what will I do with myself here in March as the Coronavirus, COVID-19, has played havoc with four of the five best weeks on the sports calendar?
Let’s get this out of the way first – the conference commissioners got it right by canceling conference tournaments due to how the virus had spread earlier in the week as it had started to have adverse effects on the world of sports.
I am of the opinion that Championship Week is probably the second-best week on the sports calendar. Of course, it is second to the opening of the NCAA Tournament with all 68 teams alive with a chance to cut down the nets on the first Monday night in April.
I was in Nashville, covering my 20th SEC Tournament in the last 23 years. We knew on Wednesday night that this wicked virus was going to altar Championship Week.
First, the announcement that conference tournaments would be played without the basketball fans. Then, cancellations followed on Thursday as we started to ramp up the brackets and spell down the losers to find the ultimate winners.
I walked into Bridgestone Arena Thursday morning as the Tennessee Volunteers and Alabama Crimson Tide gathered to open the four-game day just after Kentucky had gone through its game day shoot-around. Upon arriving at my seat, I was told by a reporter that the SEC Tournament had been canceled.
I logged onto the computer and conferences across college basketball starting to shut the weekend down as well. It was a sad feeling.
The collective decisions seemed right based on the outbreak the night before when Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the Coronavirus and the game between the Jazz and the Oklahoma City Thunder was cancelled just before tip-off.
As the conferences started their postponements, there was a noticeable silence with the NCAA on the status of the NCAA Tournament. The ball dropped later on Thursday afternoon when NCAA president Mark Emmert, who should have been ousted long ago, announced that the brackets were not postponed. They were CANCELLED!
The idea that you cancel this, robbing seniors of the one thing that they had worked for all of their lives, was a ridiculous decision, based on the fact that no one knows what the status of the virus will be in a month or even in May.
Rather than monitor and watch the flow of this virus, Emmert and his merry band decided the fate of the event and the seniors who had put in countless hours of work to realize their dreams.
The ridiculousness spilled over into spring sports as the entire NCAA spring calendar was cancelled as well. Not postponed, which could have been reasonable. CANCELLED!
This was so matter of fact that it was clear that little thought was put into the decision and the fact that the virus could potentially subside and even in a month, a vaccine could be under development.
We are dealing with the hypothetical of course, but even this time the NCAA contradicted its own self as there always seems to be a gray area in everything they do. This was done recklessly as there was clearly little analysis and care to try to save the seasons for waves of seniors, whether it be in men’s and women’s basketball or in all of the affected spring sports, not to mention others in related and support fields that are horribly impacted economically.
As I browsed through Twitter, I saw a rapidly growing and totally impactful idea to allow all the seniors in all of the cancelled sports to have an extra year to play which would give them the opportunity to try to win championships. That possibility is being considered as I’m writing this column.
It may not happen though, as it is probably too cutting edge for the NCAA, which would rather revel in its own power status and its ability to damage rather than lead.
As this story unravels and we watch where the impact of this virus goes, it is time to also give attention to the virus that has plagued players, coaches and parents of athletes for years – the NCAA.
The group is like swimming piranhas which sink their collective teeth into college athletes as they make countless dollars on the heads of 18-22-year-olds. The organization refuses to give them any part of the money that is made on the sweat of their collective brows in all sports.
Consequently, it’s time for each individual sport to have its own commissioner, someone who has demonstrated forward thinking and vision into the future of where sports and college athletics should go.
It’s time to lead Emmert and his farm of ostriches, who continue to push their collective heads further into the sand, into the pastures of retirement rather than let them to continue to create abstract rules and laws to strong-arm athletes, coaches and parents in the 21st Century.
