SPORTS USA TODAY ❚ FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2020 ❚ 5C
fallout in two European countries.
Restrictions on large events are now
in Week 3 in most states. Even as con-
firmed COVID-19 cases spike as testing
increases, sports leagues and other en-
tities are preparing multiple contingen-
cies in the hope social distancing slows
the spread.
Ultimately, the coronavirus itself and
the data chronicling its spread will pro-
vide the “when” portion of that answer.
The how? That might require signifi-
cant creativity and unprecedented ac-
tions.
The NBA, whose teams have about 17
games left in its regular season plus the
playoffs, is brainstorming numerous
scenarios for a restart, including region-
al sites playing host to multiple teams
and multiple playoff series, according to
a person familiar with the league’s
thinking. The person spoke to USA
TODAY Sports on condition of anonym-
ity because discussions are ongoing.
MLB, meanwhile, is regularly speak-
ing with other leagues to share best
practices and insights as it ponders a
new opening day, according to a person
with direct knowledge of those discus-
sions.
While President Donald Trump float-
ed a goal of April 12 to mark a symbolic
restart of larger gatherings, MLB, the
person said, will be guided by the CDC,
WHO and a group of infectious disease
specialists to gain the best possible un-
derstanding. The person spoke to USA
TODAY Sports on condition of anonym-
ity because the conversations are pri-
vate.
In an interview with ESPN on
Wednesday, MLB Commissioner Rob
Manfred said the league’s preference is
to “have fans in the ballpark as soon as
health considerations would allow,”
with the CDC’s recent recommendation
pushing that earliest possible time into
mid-May.
While every league is navigating un-
charted waters, there’s at least one cau-
tionary tale to avoid.
A Feb. 19 Champions League soccer
match in Milan, Italy, between Atalanta
of Bergamo against Spanish club Valen-
cia was memorialized as a “biological
bomb” by Fabiano di Marco, the chief
pneumologist at the hospital in Berga-
mo, in comments to Italian newspaper
Corriere della Sera.
The equation is simple enough:
40,000 fans, including thousands who
traveled from Spain to Italy, gathering
two days before the first case of commu-
nity spread COVID-19 was confirmed in
Italy, according to The Associated Press.
The teams shared a meal and gifts the
night before the match.
At least five Valencia players were in-
fected, as was a Spanish journalist, but
the bigger toll came in Bergamo, where
the first COVID-19 case was discovered
less than a week after the match. It soon
became a flash point of coronavirus in
Italy, which has more than 80,000 con-
firmed cases and 8,000 deaths.
That scenario certainly reinforcesthe NCAA’s decision to cancel its men’s
and women’s basketball tournaments
and illustrates how fans in North Amer-
ica are fortunate that awareness spread
here before COVID-19 did.
The weapon of choice against the
coronavirus for most states and munici-
palities is social distancing, a strategy
lauded by disease specialists but also
one fraught with ambiguity on the back
end.
After all, the statistical curve of in-
fections and fatalities might flatten, but
it won’t disappear, a concept the leagues
must wrestle with in assembling groups
of more than 50 – merely to play – let
alone congregating thousands of fans.
“We’re not going to have a clear play-
ing field when it’s over,” says Waldman.
“With the magnitude of this and the way
it’s behaving, people have to realize thisapproach we’re using will lengthen the
period of time in which the virus is
transmitted.
“If we have fewer people infected in
the short term, it’s going to result in peo-
ple being infected for a longer period.
It’s the choice we’ve made. How that
plays out at the other end of the curve,
I’m afraid to say we don’t know. When
you press down on the peak, it spreads
out.”
While MLB, MLS, the NBA and NHL
worked in concert to ban non-essential
personnel, including media, from their
locker rooms three to four days before
the total shutdown, it’s unclear whether
they will work in lockstep to start play-
ing games again.
By the time the curve has sufficiently
flattened, the NFL and college football,
too, might be grappling with similar is-
sues as training camps open and exhibi-
tion games loom.
Going first might please its fans, but
it will carry risks.
“Months from now, is somebody go-
ing to say, ‘We can’t go on forever like
this, we’re going to open up?’ ” asks
Waldman. “And they’ll open up and
studies will be done and see if transmis-
sion is occurring. And if it goes OK,
someone else will pop their head up and
give it a go.
“I suspect there will be incidents of
transmission early on, and maybe some
freaking out. So it will probably be a re-
covery in fits and starts in the large con-
gregation/venue sector, and not just
sports – churches, concerts, an election
campaign with a lot of events going on.”
Those decisions are weeks or months
away, with the implications lasting well
into 2021, given the unrelenting con-
struct of the sports calendar.
Waldman was recently discussing
the virus with a Spanish colleague who
noted his countrymen lack social dis-
tancing in their culture.
The same with the American sports
fan, who has remained patient, a quality
that might wither as sports-less weeks
and months stack up and numbers
might suggest to the layman that it’s
safe to congregate.
“We’re going to find out what we’re
made of,” says Waldman. “The only peo-
ple who can stop this is us. And we can.
We just have to choose to do it, and that
may force us to change our habits and
customs longer than we’d like.”Thursday was supposed to be opening day for Major League Baseball. When will
it be safe for it and other sports to return to play? JEFF CHIU/APResumes
Continued from Page 1C
some impact on us,” said Utah State
athletic director John Hartwell, who fin-
ished a $36 million project in 2016 that
added 24 luxury suites and more than
700 premium seats to the Aggies’ foot-
ball stadium. “You could have someone
who was buying a suite and 10 club seats
but may say, hey I don’t need those extra
seats anymore.
“I think we all have to be prepared for
that, but we’re trying to be as proactive
as we can. We’re making sure we try to
touch base with all of our donors to keep
them engaged.”
Since the March 12 announcement
that the NCAA men’s basketball tourna-
ment had been canceled and colleges
across the country were basically shut-
ting down for the semester, the volume
of questions and issues athletic direc-
tors have been dealing with is almost
immeasurable.
The immediate action items like get-
ting athletes back home and suspend-
ing off-campus recruiting took prece-
dence. There are dozens more that re-
main unresolved such as how the NCAA
will deal with freshman eligibility when
ACT and SAT testing centers are cur-
rently shut down.
But at the moment, the medium- and
long-term thinking of many athletic di-
rectors is focused on two overlapping
tracks: Is a normal, 12-game football
season going to start on time, and how
does the potential for a deep recession
change an industry that has relied on in-
dividual donors and local and regional
businesses to buy season tickets and
donate money for the locker room wa-
terfalls and sleeping pods that have
fueled an arms race in college athletics?
The first part of that equation con-
tains too many unknowns to reasonably
untangle. As one administrator at a
high-revenue-generating program ac-
knowledged, internal budget modeling
has started to take place about a “very
different fall,” which could mean any-
thing from a shortened season with loss
of home game revenue to a delayed sea-
son to games played without fans. The
administrator spoke on the condition of
anonymity because they weren’t autho-
rized to speak on behalf of the athletic
department.
All kinds of models for an altered sea-
son have been drafted by athletic de-
partments that illustrate how important
it is from a revenue standpoint the foot-
ball season is played in one form or an-
other.
Another administrator mentioned
potential layoffs or significant cuts if
loss of football revenue reached 15% or
20% of the budget.
“We’re working budgets that have us
staying flat or (experiencing) a 10% re-
duction, a 20% reduction because we
just don’t know,” said Arkansas athletic
director Hunter Yurachek, who said
ticket sales in football, basketball and
baseball make between $40 million and
$45 million of a $125 million budget.
But what the season eventually looks
like is largely out of their hands at the
athletic department level and instead
will be driven by how well the COVID-19
spread is contained, how comfortable
college presidents are with opening up
their campuses and how conference of-
fices and the College Football Playoff co-
ordinate potential structural changes to
the season.
Assuming football is played this fall,
TV revenue gives college sports some-
thing of a backstop. The power confer-
ences this year will distribute to their
members anywhere from $33 million on
the low end (Pac-12) to $54 million (Big
Ten) at the apex, and TV demand for
college football is likely to be sky high
after a spring and potentially a summer
without live sports.
But whether fans will be immediatelycomfortable crowding back into
70,000-seat stadiums – and whether
their financial situations will allow
them to buy tickets – is another matter
altogether. Making the calculation even
more complicated is that the time to col-
lect money for those season ticket pack-
ages is typically right now, when the
amount of economic uncertainty for
millions of people has rarely been high-
er.
In recent days, schools have rolled
out a variety of plans to delay or spread
out payments for tickets. Just Tuesday,
Baylor extended its season ticket re-
newal period to April 15, and Arkansas
moved the deadline for Razorback
Foundation pledges by a week to April 6.
Yurachek said Arkansas’ renewal
rate had already reached 84% of a 90%
goal and that officials were hoping the
extra time would help the last group
trickle in after many fans spent the last
two weeks worrying more about family
issues or transitioning to work at home.
Several athletic directors said they
expect to lose some ticket holders but,
like Arkansas, the year-over-year track-
ing numbers haven’t collapsed yet.
“We moved our due date from April 15
to May 15 and we’ve allowed fans to ex-
tend their payoffs so they don’t have to
do it all at once, and we’re trying to do
some of those things now just to give
folks flexibility,” Kansas State athleticdirector Gene Taylor said. “People are
still buying season tickets. I think we
sold 1,000 in renewals and new pur-
chases last week and this week it was
more like 500. But it’s possible someone
who is on the edge of being able to afford
a season ticket might take a break and
become a single-game buyer.”
Wren Baker, athletic director at North
Texas, said he’s also directed his staff to
“double down” on contacts with donors,
including handwritten thank-you notes
and personal phone calls from coaches.
However, Baker acknowledged that a
long-planned fundraising project to ex-
pand the school’s athletic center was on
hold indefinitely.
“I can get to a place where I think it’s
still important to us (to fund-raise for)
student-athlete scholarships, especial-
ly if we don’t have revenues coming in,”
Baker said. “But making an appeal for
brick-and-mortar in this environment
doesn’t seem like the appropriate thing
to do when you know millions of people
have lost their jobs since this all started.
There are more worthwhile causes than
building a building. When this is over
and the economy starts to come back,
there’s a time and place to pick that up.
But I don’t think I could even look at
someone with a straight face and ask
them to help us build a building today.”
In a sense, college athletics is no dif-
ferent from other sports and entertain-
ment businesses, all of which will face
various levels of uncertainty in the post-
coronavirus pandemic world. But what
made college athletics different, partic-
ularly in the last several years, is how
much of its growth was fueled by phi-
lanthropy and invested in luxuries that
were primarily designed to appeal to
recruits.
But from the very top of the sport to
the bottom, the availability of those rev-
enue streams are being challenged in
ways that even administrators who
went through the 2008 financial crisis
are unsure how to assess.
“Even back then, you knew there was
an endgame,” Hartwell said. “History
told you the market is going to turn back
up, stay the course. But this encom-
passes people’s financial health, their
physical health and, in some cases,
mortality. It’s a whole different ball-
game.
“There’s just so much uncertainty
still out there that we can’t quantify. We
can all guess, but until the health risks
have subsided we can’t really come up
with scenarios that have meat to them.
And in the meantime we control what
we can control.”Colleges
Continued from Page 1C
Will college football stadiums be this packed in the fall and will donors come
back in full force? Athletic directors are wondering about the impact of the novel
coronavirus. STEPHEN LEW/USA TODAY SPORTS