The Washington Post - 13.03.2020

friday, march 13 , 2020. the washington post eZ sU A

The coronavirus outbreak

and B ig 12, Big Sky and Big East —

all canceled, even after Creighton

and St. John’s had played the first

half of the day’s opening game.

fourteen conferences in all. What

had seemed drastic just 48 hours

earlier suddenly seemed not just

sensible but necessary.

“I’m really, really, really disap-

pointed, but I can’t put my disap-

pointment above anybody’s

health,” s aid Scott Weitz, a board

member of the University of

maryland’s athletics booster club

who had plans to fly to Indianapo-

lis on friday for the Big Te n event

poned the next two rounds of

games. Baseball and hockey mi-

nor leagues suspended play, as

did the National Lacrosse League.

Boston marathon organizers an-

nounced this year’s race would be

postponed, and ski and snow-

board events were canceled

across the United States as many

olympic athletes competing over-

seas scrambled to return home.

And the ATP To ur decided to

suspend play for six weeks.

“This is not a decision we have

taken lightly, and it represents a

great loss for our tournaments,

players and fans worldwide,” ATP

To ur Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi

said.

As the day’s college basketball

conference tournaments were

about to get underway — in some

cases, with teams warming up on

the court for their opening games,

tweets and news releases started

flying in rapid succession. The

SEC tournament? Sacked. The Big

Te n? Done. ACC and AAC, Pac-

Speedway and Homestead-miami

Speedway will take place in front

of empty stands. The PGA To ur,

meanwhile, changed course late

Thursday night and canceled the

final three days of one of its mar-

quee tournaments, the Players

Championship, as well as all

events through at least April 5.

The NCAA initially announced

Wednesday it would continue to

stage its winter sports champion-

ships inside empty arenas but

pressure mounted Thursday to

cancel the events altogether.

Thursday was filled with team

owners, league executives and

boards of governors from across

the sports world weighing their

options in light of the NBA’s deci-

sion. The NBA announced a sec-

ond Jazz player, later revealed to

be Donovan mitchell, also had

tested positive for coronavirus,

and by midday a surreal week

settled into a spree of endless

delays and cancellations. La Liga,

Spain’s top soccer league, post-

high-stakes decision. The NCAA

collects more than $770 million

annually in b roadcast rights, and

experts say economics surely

play an outsize role in such deci-

sions.

“Ideally you would say [sports

organizers] are looking out for the

health of consumers because if

you’re not looking out for your

consumers’ health, what’s going

to happen in the long run?” said

Nick Watanabe, an assistant pro-

fessor of sport and entertainment

management at the University of

South Carolina. “But I’d imagine

they’re playing some sort of mid-

dle-ground game where they’re

looking at the health concerns

while also maintaining their pri-

mary revenue source.”

Watanabe said leagues have an

“ethical and moral duty” to pro-

tect fans, many of whom might

continue coming to games in the

face of global pandemic if that

option remained available, which

differentiates sporting events

from many other mass gather-

ings.

“Consumer behavior is differ-

ent in sports, especially based on

sport and region,” he said. “You

will get people who will go no

matter what. There are some of

those fans. That’s the type of per-

son you want to keep away from

the game.”

most o f the leagues in the Unit-

ed States say they will continue to

monitor coronavirus develop-

ments and will consult with pub-

lic health officials as they decide

when to resume operations.

“our goal is to resume play as

soon as it is appropriate and pru-

dent,” Bettman said, “so that we

will be able to complete the sea-

son and award the Stanley Cup.”

major League Baseball, mean-

while, says it has been preparing

for a “variety of contingency

plans” and “will remain flexible as

events warrant, with the hope of

resuming normal operations as

soon as possible.”

most sports leagues seemed to

hope that by next month play

could resume, schedules could be

adjusted and some semblance of

normalcy could return to the

sports world. A return to business

as usual around April 1 could be

overly optimistic. Illinois Gov. J.B.

Pritzker (D), for starters, said he

has urged local team owners to

refrain from playing games until

may 1.

David Berri, an economics pro-

fessor at Southern Utah Universi-

ty, said this tumultuous period

won’t impact the sports fan’s ap-

petite or any long-term demand.

“A t some point this will end and

we’ll go b ack to selling tickets,” he

said. “I would liken it to NfL

players going on strike. What

would happen in that case? Noth-

ing would happen. They’d come

back at some point, and people

would go back to watching foot-

ball. Te mporarily, your games are

interrupted, and afterward, fans

will go back to buying tickets.”

[email protected]

Jacob bogage and adam Kilgore

contributed to this report.

and attend all of the Te rrapins’

NCAA tournament games the rest

of the month. “... It’s just like

watching dominoes fall. You can

see the writing on the wall.”

Later in the day, t he Big Te n, the

Patriot League and American

Athletic Conference, among oth-

ers, followed the Ivy League’s ex-

ample and canceled all spring

practices and games, and some

schools, such as Kansas, Virginia,

Te mple and Duke, put an immedi-

ate end to all athletic activities.

“I know it is a great disappoint-

ment to our student-athletes and

coaches, whose hard work and

dedication to their sports and

Duke is inspirational to so many,

but we must first look out for their

health and well-being,” Duke

President Vincent E. Price said.

The NCAA made that path easi-

er for other schools and confer-

ences later Thursday afternoon

by wiping out the full slate of

championships.

“This decision is based on the

evolving covid-19 public health

threat, our ability to ensure the

events do not contribute to spread

of the pandemic, and the imprac-

ticality of hosting such events at

any time during this academic

year given ongoing decisions by

other entities,” NCAA President

mark Emmert said in a statement.

The cancellation of the men’s

basketball tournament was a

the familiar brackets, office pools
or all-day channel-surfing. The
basketball tournaments had been
held every year since 1939 for
men’s college teams and 1982 for
women’s teams.
Even non-sports fans could be
facing an indefinite period of Net-
flix and nights at h ome as m uch of
the entertainment world similar-
ly has shuttered its doors. one day
after an usher tested positive for
coronavirus, New York Gov. An-
drew m. Cuomo (D) announced a
ban Thursday on all gatherings of
more than 500 people, suspend-
ing all Broadway shows for a
month. In Washington, mayor
muriel E. Bowser (D) recom-
mended canceling all gatherings
with more than 1,000, and the
Kennedy Center announced
Thursday it suspended all perfor-
mances through the end of the
month. Similarly, a ll Smithsonian
museums, the National Zoo and
several theme parks, including
Disney World and Universal Stu-
dios, announced they would tem-
porarily shut their gates.
While the entire world grap-
ples with the covid-19 outbreak,
public health officials say aggres-
sive responses from event orga-
nizers are vital in that they limit
the number of large crowds that
will gather in the coming weeks
and also underscore for giant seg-
ments of the population the mag-
nitude of the health crisis facing
the country. University of Nebras-
ka medical Center professor Ali
Khan, the former director of the
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s office of Public
Health Preparedness and re-
sponse, said the week’s shock
waves in sports made meaningful
reverberations in broader society.
He c alled the mass cancellations a
“great public reminder of the im-
portance of social distancing” a nd
“that anybody can get infected
now in our community now — not
just folks on cruise ships and
coming from Italy.
“The NBA suspending their
season makes a bold statement,”
Khan added. “Health trumps ev-
erything else — including sports,
entertainment and money.”
The NBA announced Wednes-
day night it was suspending its
season after Utah Jazz player
rudy Gobert tested positive for
the virus. That immediately
upped the ante for other leagues
to reconsider the dangers posed
by staging further games.
A day later, mLB canceled the
remainder of its spring training
and postponed its opening Day
by at least two weeks. The NHL
and major League Soccer similar-
ly chose to suspend their seasons.
“The NHL has been attempting
to follow the mandates of health
experts and local authorities,
while preparing for any possible
developments without taking
premature or unnecessary mea-
sures,” Commissioner Gary Bett-
man said in a statement Thurs-
day. “However, following last
night’s news that an NBA player
has tested positive for coronavi-
rus — and given that our leagues
share so many facilities and lock-
er rooms and it now seems likely
that some member of the NHL
community would test positive at
some point — it is no longer
appropriate to try to continue to
play games at this time.”
NASCAr announced it will
move forward with its current
event schedule but upcoming
stock-car races at Atlanta motor

sports from A

Absence of big events leaves fans a March without madness

Photos by John McDonnell/the Washington Post

top: ACC Commissioner John

swofford announces the

cancellation of the men’s

basketball tournament with the

Florida state team in front of

him at an empty Greensboro

(N.C.) Coliseum.

LEFt: Virginia’s Kihei Clark

leaves his ACC tournament

hotel and prepares to board a

bus back to Charlottesville.

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