These are unprecedented times in sports. The games are over, at least for now.
Just when we need our sports the most — to take our minds off this crazy world and the unknown of what’s to come — they are gone. And there seems to be no foolproof way to understand just how far any of this will extend before it is contained and a credible all-clear is sounded.
Never before has the sports world — or world itself — been so affected by what we now know as a world-wide pandemic known as COVID-19 or the coronavirus.
Things started to come down the turnpike late Wednesday night when it was discovered that Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert had been diagnosed with COVID-19. The NBA announced it would be suspending the season, and as the New Orleans Pelicans and Sacramento Kings were about to take the court, they were summoned off ending the season for the foreseeable future.
Since then, it’s been a steady flow of cancelations and postponements, from golf to auto racing to all college spring sports.
MLB would later cancel the rest of their spring training games and delay the start of opening day for at least two weeks. The NCAA would then deliver the next blow, canceling the entire men’s and women’s tournaments as well as the rest of spring athletics because of the outbreak.
The XFL was among the last professional leagues to hold out — but they decided to cancel the rest of their games during the 2020 season with a promise to play in 2021.
I feel sorry for these college athletes who won’t get to finish out their senior campaigns. To have your season, and in some cases careers, cut short in this manner is just unthinkable.
While professional players are still getting paid and still have a chance to play when this all gets better, I am thinking of the college seniors who might miss the only March Madness of their life.
There will be no hosting a NCAA Tournament sub-regional next weekend for Vic Schaefer and his Lady Bulldogs.
And highly promising Mississippi college baseball seasons are on hold. Fifth-ranked Ole Miss is off to a 16-1 start and has won 16 consecutive games. No. 13 Mississippi State, 12-4, has won five straight.
While my heart goes out to the players and coaches who had the rug pulled out from under them, this was the only way to deal with a world-wide pandemic.
The decision was simple, though its ramifications weren’t: “Are you gonna be proactive or reactive?” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey asked himself. “And we felt right now, given what’s happening, we needed to be proactive at this point.”
Within a world in crisis. And a country convulsed as it tries to comprehend, and contend with, the evolving scope of the virus and reconcile the blurry line between the pragmatic and panic — a line any rational person can now see must be straddled toward erring in caution.
Hopefully, once the spread seems to be in check, we get our diversions back.
nContact Bill Burrus at 581-7237 or bburrus@gwcommonwealth.com.
