Big 12 tourneys in KC: Nearing 1-year anniversary of day sports stood still, it’s time
Now, where was college basketball before it was so rudely interrupted one year ago?
In Kansas City and a host of cities nationwide for other conference tournaments, that’s where.
The Big 12 men’s and women’s tournaments return to KC’s T-Mobile Center and Municipal Auditorium next week. At least that’s what conference commissioner Bob Bowlsby is expecting.
“Honestly, if you asked me, ‘Am I absolutely betting my life on us playing our tournaments or the NCAA tournaments?’ After all we’ve been through this past year, there is no 100 percent certainty,” Bowlsby said. “You recognize you’re not in charge. The virus is.”
But COVID-19 national health trends are improving, and Bowlsby, 10 men’s and women’s teams and a small percentage of fans are planning to be in Kansas City to celebrate college basketball and get in this year’s edition of games that were among sports’ first events lost to the pandemic.
Most sports that paused last March restarted three or four months later with abbreviated schedules. That was not the case for college sports because of the awful timing.
Winter and spring championships and remaining regular-season competitions were canceled. Major conference basketball tournaments and the NCAA Tournament have no champion listed for 2020.
A year later, schools and teams continue to feel the impact, but at least there are conference tournaments to look forward to, if only on the small screen. The Big 12’s events will have limited capacity — about 20 percent of normal per building — and there will be no pep rallies in the Power & Light District.
The hope is these are one-time restrictions, a bridge toward eventually returning to the full, festive feel of the tournaments and attendance limited only by capacities of buildings.
The financial fallout from canceled events and limited ticket sales for football and basketball has caused belt-tightening in athletic departments on campuses across the country
A Department of Labor study found that a cumulative 650,000 jobs have been cut from colleges and universities since February 2020 — about 13 percent of all higher-education workers. The report didn’t specify the types of campus jobs eliminated, but athletic departments have certainly felt the pinch.
Missouri athletic director Jim Sterk said that his department has been down as many as 45 positions, although some of those employees are beginning to get hired back.
Added expenses will be layered on top of less income in the next school year. An additional year of eligibility is being granted to this year’s seniors. Those who return on scholarship represent dollars added to the department’s bottom line.
“Institutions are taking on debt, athletic departments are taking on debt, and it’s going to take multiple years to recover from that,” Bowlsby said.
One cost-saving measure from the pandemic year could provide future savings in recruiting budgets. Prospects will still want to make campus visits, but virtual meetings can become more commonplace once COVID-19 is not.
“I would love to see virtual recruiting continue,” Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor said “We could see some savings there without coaches having to go out on the road all of the time. I think coaches will tell you that works pretty well.“
Bowlsby said he envisions future Big 12 coaches meetings occurring virtually, too.
“I don’t have a crystal ball,” he said. “I just think some things we thought that were vitally important previously that we now understand aren’t quite that critical.”
The events that brought us to the one-year anniversary to the day sports stood still seem like a blur to Bowlsby.
On March 10, a Tuesday, Bowlsby joined KC Mayor Quinton Lucas and others at the Kansas City Girls Preparatory Academy to present a check for improvements on behalf of the conference.
That day, the Ivy League became the first conference to announce it was canceling its men’s and women’s tournaments, which had been scheduled to begin three days later, because of COVID-19.
A flurry of activity was occurring behind the scenes.
As the event at the school in Kansas City was breaking up, Bowlsby met with Big 12 deputy commissioner Tim Weiser, who had been collecting information from around the country — including via a briefing with the White House coronavirus task force.
“I said to Tim that this is a snowball rolling downhill,” Bowlsby said. “It will be a miracle of we get to the finals on Saturday. We’re starting to see the reality of it.”
The Big 12 got through that night’s two scheduled men’s games inside T-Mobile Center, but by then conference officials knew enough about the fast-moving pandemic to announce that no fans would be allowed inside the venue for the remainder of the tournaments. Fans at T-Mobile booed when the announcement was made.
What most didn’t know at that moment was that an NBA game was also being postponed just before tipoff. Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz was placed on the injured list and tested positive for COVID-19. The NBA soon suspended its season.
The Big 12 quickly worked out a ticket plan allowing only family and friends — 125 tickets per school — into Thursday’s conference tournament quarterfinal games for March 12. But that morning, from his hotel room in the downtown Marriott, Bowlsby was on the phone with the league presidents. The conference’s athletic directors were in the room.
The news was grim.
Texas and Texas Tech had arrived to play the first quarterfinal game, but before they took the floor to warm up, the decision to cancel the rest of the tournament was made. Bowlsby made his way to the arena for an 11:30 a.m. news conference.
“That press conference, even today, is sort of a blur,” he said. “It was other-worldly. It didn’t really seem like it was happening, that we were calling this off.
“At that point you didn’t have the opportunity to think much about the implications.”
Bowlsby had been on the phone or exchanging texts throughout the previous evening and that morning with NCAA president Mark Emmert and the commissioners of other major conferences. By Thursday afternoon, the NCAA had canceled its men’s and women’s tournaments, too.
“There were so many moving parts,” Bowlsby said. “Federal government, state government, local health officials, our own schools, which were in different states of realization about what was going on on their campuses — we were all sort of in a state of shock dealing with it.”
The communication among those major-conference commissioners only increased over the next several months. Bowlsby said the bosses from the five automatic-qualifier leagues spoke every day, including Saturday and Sunday.
And every day, more nettlesome details emerged. What would become of the seniors’ eligibility? Could summer workouts proceed? How often would COVID-19 testing be administered ... and who would pay for it?
At one point in mid-August, as COVID rates were rising, Bowlsby thought football and other fall sports wouldn’t happen. A conference call with football players across Big 12 schools made clear that the players themselves wanted to play, but they had concerns about their safety and scholarships.
In the end, however, the fall seasons proceeded.
“I think we answered those questions in ways that satisfied them, and that’s part of the reason they bought in,” Bowlsby said. “We didn’t have a lot of opt-outs or teams that didn’t want to play. We listened to the players.”
Every Big 12 football team got in at least nine games, and after several pauses during the men’s and women’s basketball seasons of 2020-21, teams have reached the final weekend of the regular season with all teams still playing.
For the Big 12 schools, the next stop is Kansas City. It’s tournament time once again.
Kellis Robinett contributed to this story.