So how was your Thursday?
In what was easily the most bizarre day in recent basketball history - might as well say sports history - tournament after tournament shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. At least two shut down at halftime of games, the SEC and the Big East. Just look at March 12th. It’s crazy.
Duke made the determination that it would not risk the safety of its players or anyone else and decided to take a miss on the ACC and the NCAA.
Not long after, the ACC reversed course and canceled the rest of the nation’s greatest conference tournament.
Things cascaded. The NBA season came to a screeching halt. The NCAA canceled ALL sporting events under its banner. MLB and hockey took a powder. Even the NFL, which is out of season and where players are contractually not allowed to go to their team offices, shut down. Even the Austin rodeo has shut down.
Locally, now Duke and UNC have used different terminology for shutting down but Duke is not allowing students to even go to their dorms to retrieve their possessions after a certain point. That’s pretty shut down.
Three local school systems have also shut down for now - Chapel Hill-Carrboro, Orange and Durham schools are all on hiatus.
All of this of course is intended to support the basic concept of social distancing, which will make it harder for for people to become infected. It’s almost certainly an essential sacrifice but that doesn’t mean we can’t miss what was about to happen.
The ACC Tournament would have been good - it almost always is. Florida State would have certainly paid Clemson back for that recent upset. We think Duke would have taken NC State again. Louisville-Syracuse? Not totally sure. And Notre Dame-Virginia was a one-point win for the Cavs last time out - in overtime.
We’d have preferred to see Duke in the finals obviously but a final between FSU and Virginia would have been great too.
We’ll never now now obviously.
And in the big tournament, everyone is aching of course. How could they not? Kids spend their lives dreaming of playing in it. At Duke or Virginia, or most years UNC, they know they’re going, but at places like Dayton or San Diego State, it’s less certain. And those schools had teams with legitimate shots at the title. Think of someone like Duke’s Justin Robinson who has worked for five years to become a major on-court contributor, only to be denied at the very apex and end of his career.
Dayton was an early adopter of sending kids home and the students there didn’t take it well, partly because their team was so hugely promising. Police were called to break them up.
Look at it this way: we’re all bubble teams now and the bubble has popped. Misery loves company.
Essentially the US is out of sports for the near future (notably absent from the list so far: MMA). ESPN has no live programming that we’re aware of which is a major crisis for them too. Expect reruns, documentaries and a heavier focus on E-Sports.
In fact, there’s a reasonable chance that in this gap, E-Sports may make major inroads into the American consciousness. ESPN has been hedging their bets for some time now. It may pay off.
We don’t know what to expect honestly but here’s our two cents, first for the NCAA and ESPN and then for the rest of us.
For ESPN: why not just re-run the whole basketball season up to the post-season? You’ve got time. Some of those games are worth watching again and at least it’s something to do.
Alternatively, you could do non-stop Classics.
For the NCAA, we realize this was a tough decision and that there weren’t many alternatives. The thing is you have break the momentum of the virus so you can isolate smaller parts and contain them.
Doesn't make it any easier and we’re sure this was a huge financial bath as well.
So here’s our suggestion to take the sting out of this: schedule a fall tournament to kick off the season.
We don’t mean a 16-team field either. At least 32, preferably 64 and ideally the ones that were most likely to be invited this spring.
Or perhaps just take the cream of the Power Conferences, Gonzaga and whoever else looks promising and do it that way.
The main thing is to give fans what they could not have in the spring. Start the season with a major event and then spend the season seeing who can either get back or break through.
The NCAA could make back some of what it loses this spring and the fans would have a major treat. Obviously it wouldn’t be the type of end-of-the-season basketball that defines March, but it would set up the rest of the year beautifully.