NCAA Tournament canceled, sports makes best possible contribution against coronavirus
Sports are the least important thing in the world right up until the moment they’re the most important thing in the world. That’s been said a million times and it’s always been true, but it’s rarely been this true.
Not important: They’re just games, and even with the social value they represent, they are games that should not be played in the midst of a global pandemic that’s spreading exponentially without a cure or vaccine, the COVID-19 coronavirus using healthy people as asymptomatic carriers to others who are vulnerable.
Important: A lot of us spend 49 weeks every year looking forward to the NCAA Tournament and that event has now been canceled. Maybe this is searching too hard for a silver lining, but perhaps this is the kind of step required not just to flatten the curve but to convince some holdouts that this is serious stuff.
The Big 12, SEC, Pac-12, Big 10, Big East (after they played one half Thursday) and most other leagues had alreaday canceled their postseason basketball tournaments. The NBA and MLS suspended their seasons. Major League Baseball suspended spring training, and is discussing a delay for the regular season.
Concerts are canceled or postponed. The president announced a travel ban. Business conferences are being ditched. Movie theaters are empty.
Basically, if you’re thinking of doing anything that involves a crowd, don’t.
“It’s disappointing in so many, many ways,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said in canceling his league’s basketball tournament. “But I think it’s emblematic of how our country will be responding to what is a very unusual set of circumstances.”
This feels like a mile marker — a day or three late, but still. Infectious disease experts and others in public health have been warning against large gatherings. Kansas City joined many other cities in declaring an emergency and banning crowds of more than 1,000 people Thursday.
This disease, described by the scientists, is particularly dangerous for many reasons. It can spread without symptoms, which is an awful match for America’s current shortage of tests.
Playing games without fans — keeping the total number of people in an arena below 1,000 — initially felt like a prudent move. But so much has happened that what a few days ago could be described as an abundance of caution is now indefensible.
We are long past the point of honestly tying any decision to any one event, but the college leagues had to be particularly informed by the NBA’s decision after a player’s test came back positive just before a game.
ESPN reported that player, Utah’s Rudy Gobert, had been on the court with 34 teammates or opponents in the previous five days. That doesn’t include officials, trainers or other staff. Each of those people has been in contact with dozens of others. On and on it goes.
The NBA consists of a maximum of 450 players. The NCAA field would be more than twice that.
Does anyone honestly believe nobody involved would have the coronavirus?
Bowlsby said he is not aware of anyone in the league testing positive. Asked later to clarify, he also said he’s not aware of anyone involved with the league being tested — positive or negative.
“We’re all going to be in the same boat,” Bowlsby said. “We’re all going to be exposed and we’re not going to know we’ve been exposed until after we begin to show symptoms, and sometimes that’s days later.”
This is a public health crisis unlike anything most of us have seen in our lives. Human nature includes a natural skepticism of what we can’t see and a resistance to major change.
This outbreak has been met with deniers, including some in politics or other public leadership. But after the last few days it’s hard to understand how anyone could think this is nothing.
Perhaps we’ll look back and wonder if this is an overreaction, but the science increasingly indicates that’s unlikely and, besides: If you’re going to be wrong, which wrong would you prefer?
These last few days are when everything changed. The exponential spread that health experts had been warning us about is showing up in tangible ways and, notably, is almost certainly underreported because of the lack of tests and how symptoms surface.
It is natural to dismiss that which we cannot see and doesn’t impact us directly. That’s where sports is unwittingly serving as a social good.
For a lot of us, the cancellation of games is the first time the coronavirus has gone from an item in the news to a change in our lives. Leagues are halting competition for a lot of reasons, including protection against potential lawsuits.
But the power to break through the noise, and to convince some final holdouts that this is real and worth some simple but invasive changes, well, that might be sport’s most important contribution possible.
This story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 3:26 PM.