Well, that sure escalated quickly. I'm not talking about coronavirus itself. I'm talking about the sports world's reaction to it. It went from wait-and-see to games with no fans to no games at all within a matter of days. And now we're all stuck in a holding pattern...and we won't even sports to keep us occupied.
When Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive and the NBA immediately suspended its season, you knew it was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened. And sure enough, all of the other dominoes started falling. Every major conference ended its men's basketball tournament. The NHL decided that since they share so many arenas with NBA teams, it would be irresponsible not to suspend their season, as well. Even MLB announced that it's going to temporarily shut down, ending Spring Training and delaying Opening Day.
Perhaps the most shocking development, though, was that the coronavirus successfully did something that even a World War couldn't. For the first time in its 82-year history, there will be no NCAA Tournament. Their initial plan was to play the games as scheduled with limited attendance. Then, when the conference tournaments began dropping like flies, the thought turned to a delay. But instead the NCAA went with the nuclear option--calling off both the men's and women's basketball tournaments entirely.
In fairness, their hand was essentially forced into making that decision. Duke announced that they were withdrawing from the ACC Tournament if it wasn't cancelled, as well as the NCAA Tournament. Then Kansas, the likely No. 1 overall seed, banned all athletic travel, effective immediately. At that point, they had no choice but to cancel. They couldn't hold a tournament with any shred of credibility without two of the top programs, including the favorite for the title.
The NCAA went even further than that, though. They cancelled all remaining NCAA Championships for the 2019-20 school year. That includes the championships that were already in progress or set to begin this weekend. As well as every spring championship. Just like that, the college sports season is effectively over.
And that's the biggest blow of all. All those student-athletes who saw their seasons come to an abrupt end. It's even worse for the seniors, whose careers have come to an end in a most unceremonious, heartbreaking fashion. I'm sure the NCAA will grant blanket waivers and everyone will keep their both their year of eligibility and scholarship, but I have no doubt that there are a number of seniors who've played their final collegiate game. And had it all end in the cruelest way possible.
Fortunately, it's an Olympic year, so some of them will still have something to keep training for. But only the best of the best will qualify for Trials, and even fewer will make the team that goes to Tokyo. The vast majority will not, however. Their primary goal for this season was winning an NCAA title. That's gone now.
I'm not going to say whether I think the decision to unilaterally cancel everything was right or wrong. And there are a lot of logistics that the NCAA, its schools and its conferences will have to work out. All I'm saying is that I feel for the student-athletes. Because even if they do decide to return next year, it won't be the same. It'll be a sad anticlimax after having their real senior season stolen from them. Plenty of others will graduate and begin the rest of their lives knowing they'll never play the sport they love again. Not competitively anyway.
Likewise, you've gotta feel for those athletes who worked so hard to qualify for NCAA Championships, only to have that opportunity taken away from them. Who knows when or if they'll ever get back? They won't have their "One Shining Moment." Instead, they can only sit there and wonder, "What if."
Pro sports will return eventually, of course. The NBA is going to take 30 days then reassess, while the NHL left it a little more open-ended. If I had to guess, I'd say the NHL regular season, which only has 2 1/2 weeks left, is over. When they return, they'll go directly into the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Which would be unfortunate for those currently just on the outside looking in. They'll probably do something similar in the NBA, which might end up extending its season into July (they can't go too deep into the summer, though, with the Olympics starting on July 24).
Things are a little easier in baseball and MLS. The MLS season just started, so it'll be much easier for them to reschedule the games that they'll be missing over the next month. As for Major League Baseball, they'll figure out what they're going to do based on when they actually get up and running again. But it seems unlikely every team will get a full 162 games in. They can finish the regular season one week later than planned and still have World Series Game 7 be on Nov. 4, which isn't too bad (and what I would've preferred on the original schedule). They can't go any later than that, though, and even to finish the regular season one week later on Oct. 4 would mean reducing the number of games each team plays.
It's not just the U.S. that has been affected, either. This is a global pandemic, and it's impacting events worldwide. All sports in Italy are shut down for a month, with La Liga and the Premier League also likely to suspend their seasons. The ATP, meanwhile, announced that all tournaments for the next six weeks are cancelled.
World Championships and Olympic qualifiers have been either cancelled or postponed, too. The World Indoor Athletics Championships were the first casualty way back in January, and they've been joined by a rash of other international events that won't take place as scheduled. The World Figure Skating Championships, World Women's Curling Championships and World Women's Hockey Championships were all supposed to take place in Canada this month. None will happen. Marathons all over the world have been postponed, cancelled or limited, too, and I'm sure others will follow (it seems highly unlikely Boston will be on its traditional April date).
This really is unprecedented. In serious situations like this, we normally have sports to distract us. But now we don't. And we have no idea when we will again. All we can do is wait for things to return to normal. Hopefully it won't be too long. Because pretty soon, we'll need our sports back.
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