The Wall Street Journal - 13.03.2020

A12| Friday, March 13, 2020 ***** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

on the health-care system.

How strange it is to write such

a sentence in a sports column. If

this column reads like a sports-

writer who didn’t know about any

of this stuff until recently, it’s be-

cause this sportswriter didn’t

know about any of this stuff until

recently. I’m trusting the experts.

And we’ve seen what happened

elsewhere. They’ve been canceling

sporting events in hard-hit China,

Japan and Italy for weeks; there

have been quarantined soccer

players and bike racers overseas.

Now it’s here. This is about as

dramatic a moment as major U.S.

sports have ever experienced: en-

tire seasons, halted, as if someone

yanked an emergency brake. NBA

players who played against the

Jazz have already started to self-

quarantine. There’s been an abrupt

end to talk about a quick return to

normalcy.

Normal doesn’t feel like it’s go-

ing to be playing sports for a

while. But there’s opportunity

here. These decisions are happen-

ing in every corner of American

life: travel, schools, conferences,

rock concerts. Disney shuttered

the Magic Kingdom. There’s a

chance to achieve something

greater for sports to join the rest

of the country in showing the wis-

dom of slowing down, turning off

and shutting down, in order to

SPORTS

The NCAA canceled its March

Madness basketball

competition for men’s and

women’s Division I teams

It was a surreal
and overwhelming
day in sports, one
that seemed to drag
on like a year.Drip,
drip, drip,the news
of cancellations kept
coming, to the point it started to
become a torrent, and it was hard
to keep up.
Here’s the takeaway: The games
we love are done, indefinitely.
Pretty much every big-time league
has shut itself down due to widen-
ing concern about the Covid-
pandemic and the urgency for “so-
cial distancing” in order to allevi-
ate the virus’s spread.
The NBA pulled the plug
Wednesday night when one of its
own players tested positive, yank-
ing teams right off the court. The
NHL blew its whistle Thursday. So
did Major League Soccer. Major
League Baseball ended spring
training and indefinitely pushed
back Opening Day. Men’s tennis is
closing up shop for at least six
weeks. The U.S. Men’s and
Women’s National Soccer Teams
are on the shelf. The Boston Mara-
thon is off for April; organizers are
hunting for a date in the fall.
Late Thursday afternoon, the
NCAA finally called off its March
Madness men’s and women’s bas-
ketball tournaments. That hand-
writing had been collecting on the
wall. First, the conference tourna-
ments went poof: ACC, Big Ten,
SEC, Big East, etc. Then traditional

powerhouses Duke and Kansas—

the Jayhawks are currently ranked

No. 1 in the country—announced

they were shutting down their ath-

letic teams, including basketball.

Love them or hate them, you

can’t have the tournament without

Duke and Kansas, come on.

So that’s that. The tournament

is canceled for the first time in its

history, which began in 1939.

March will be considerably less

mad.

There were holdouts. Scattered

events attempted to stick to the

schedule. They tried to play golf at

the Players Championship, for

some reason. The PGA went with

the “no fans” approach, but by late

Thursday night, the tournament

was tabled, too. “No fans” wound

up having a short life as a strat-

egy. Once the NBA shutdown hap-

pened, it underlined an obvious

point: a virus draws no distinction

between the people in the stands,

and the people who play the

games.

The economic impact will be

enormous, but the bottom line is

goingtohavetotakeabackseat.

March Madness alone is a billion-

dollar operation, but it’s hard to

justify barreling through reck-

lessly, when the experts are telling

us to cease holding big events,

avoid large crowds, stay home if

possible—all in the name of hope-

fully “flattening the curve” and

slowing down the rate of infection,

which, in turn, will alleviate stress

March Is Suddenly

A Lot Less Mad

save lives.

And yes, let’s do the disclaimer

here: it’s sports. It’s big business,

and it involves people’s liveli-

hoods, and, of course, that terrible

bet you made for the Browns to

win the Super Bowl, but these are

games.What’shappeningnowis

far more serious and substantial.

Are we going to miss sports?

Definitely. They can be joyful and

therapeutic, even the Mets. Is it

possible we will look back on this

week and sayWow, we really went

to town and may have overre-

acted?No one can be certain. But

that’s the idea here. Going over-

board would be an excellent, life-

affirming result.

Nationals teammates Emilio Bonifacio and Starlin Castro tap elbows during a spring-training game on Thursday.

resume play as soon as it is appro-

priate and prudent, so that we will

be able to complete the season and

award the Stanley Cup.”

Baseball quickly followed suit,

delaying the start of the regular

season by at least two weeks and

halting spring training as of 4

p.m. ET, following a con-

ference call between the

30 teams and com-

missioner Rob Man-

fred. Opening day

had been scheduled

for March 26. MLB

said it “will an-

nounce the effects

on the schedule at an

appropriate time and

will remain flexible as

events warrant, with the hope

of resuming normal operations as

soon as possible.”

In the history of MLB, which

dates back more than a century,

opening day had never been de-

layed for any reason other than la-

bor stoppages, said John Thorn, the

league’s official historian.

The NBA ceased operations

Wednesday night after Jazz center

Rudy Gobert tested positive for the

coronavirus, and superstar guard

Donovan Mitchell was the only

other person in the Jazz’s traveling

party to test positive. The NCAA,

MLB, NHL and MLS acted in rapid

succession Thursday, all canceling

and postponing games in the span

of a few hours.

The NCAA bowed to the inevita-

ble when it canceled its men and

women’s Division I tournaments.

After games were played on

Wednesday, most conference

tournaments—which de-

cide who receives auto-

matic bids to March

Madness--called off

their events before

Thursday’s games

began. Then Brian

Hainline, the NCAA’s

chief medical officer,

suggested at midday

that the organization

was grappling with the in-

adequate coronavirus testing

infrastructure in the U.S.

At 4:16 p.m. ET on Thursday, the

NCAA sent out an email with a

statement, canceling all remaining

spring and winter championships—

including the Division I wrestling

championships, also scheduled for

March, the women’s gymnastics

championship in April and the Col-

lege World Series in June.

One of the few global leagues to

resist cancellations was the English

Premier League, which said Thurs-

day evening that matches would go

ahead this weekend with stadiums

open to the public. But less than an

hour after the announcement, news

came from Arsenal that its manager

Mikel Arteta had tested positive for

the virus. As a result, the entire

squad was put under quarantine as

well as much of the club staff. “It is

clear we will not be able to play

some fixtures on their currently

scheduled dates,” Arsenal said,

without saying when it would be

able to return to the field.

The NBA was scrambling after

two players tested positive, some-

thing that hasn’t happened in the

other sports to this point. The

teams that the Jazz played in the

last two weeks underwent testing

and self-quarantined, while the

league office prepared contingency

plans for the rest of the season and

the playoffs that were scheduled to

begin next month.

In baseball, some semblance of

normalcy continued into Thursday,

even as other leagues began shut-

ting down. Six spring training

games in Florida began around 1

p.m. ET, all with fans in attendance.

That went against the wishes of

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who rec-

ommended the cancellation or post-

ponement of mass gatherings in his

state. MLB later announced that all

other spring training games had

been canceled, while World Baseball

Classic qualifier games in Tucson,

Ariz., had been postponed.

In the case of hockey, many

teams share locker rooms and facil-

ities with NBA teams. For instance,

on March 4, the Jazz played against

the New York Knicks at Madison

Square Garden, a venue that also

hosts games for the New York

Rangers. The NHL advised all play-

ers and staff to take precautions

and self-quarantine if necessary.

The NFL also canceled its Annual

Meeting, the most important gath-

ering of owners, coaches and execu-

tives, set for March 29. The meeting

was scheduled to take place in Flor-

ida, and its cancellation marked the

first major decision the NFL has

had to make in response to the vi-

rus as the only major American

sports league out of season.

The U.S. Soccer Federation can-

celed all U.S. men’s and women’s

national team games through April

30. The women were scheduled to
    play two friendlies in April in the
    U.S., and the men were set to play
    the Netherlands on March 26 in
    Eindhoven and Wales on March 30
    in Cardiff.
    Meanwhile the Olympic Flame
    torch race got under way on Thurs-
    day in Ancient Olympia in front of a
    scaled-back crowd. Among those in
    attendance was International Olym-
    pic Committee President Thomas
    Bach, who said, “we remain abso-
    lutely in line with our Japanese
    hosts in our commitment to deliver-
    ing safe Olympic Games in July this
    year.” The Opening Ceremony is
    scheduled to take place on July 24.
    Hours later, President Trump
    suggested to reporters ahead of a
    meeting with Irish Prime Minister
    Leo Varadkar that Japan should
    consider postponing the Olympics.
    “I think if you cancel it, make it a
    year later, that’s a better alternative
    than doing it with no crowd.”
    When asked about Trump’s sug-
    gestions, the IOC referred to Bach’s
    previous statement. HARRY HOW/GETTY IMAGES

JULIO CORTEZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS

JASON GAY

Sports have been the longtime
source of comforting distraction
through world wars and financial
calamity. But games will not play
that role in the coronavirus crisis.
A sweeping shutdown of the
American sports scene rolled across
the industry on Thursday. The
NCAA canceled its marquee March
Madness tournaments and other
championships. Major League Base-
ball, Major League Soccer and the
National Hockey League suspended
their operations. All of them fol-
lowed the National Basketball Asso-
ciation, which shut down late
Wednesday after a Utah Jazz player
tested positive for the coronavirus.
The sports bodies largely waited
to act until they had no other
choice. The NCAA, for example, has
insisted for the last week that can-
cellation was off the table as an op-
tion. It only took action after Duke
and Kansas, two of college basket-
ball’s blue-chip brands, forced the
NCAA’s hand by suspending all ath-
letic operations. The NCAA’s move
also came after its own chief medi-
cal officer said the nation’s testing
infrastructure couldn’t support
widespread testing of competitors.
These unprecedented actions will
have wide-ranging implications that
extend far beyond championships

and statistics. They will cost the

leagues hundreds of millions of dol-

lars and dramatically affect the live-

lihoods of the many thousands of

people who work in and around

sports. They range from television

networks, gambling enterprises and

small-business owners near stadi-

ums, to ticket-takers, ushers, pop-

corn vendors and countless others.

“This is the most extraordinary

stretch of days I’ve seen in my 30-

plus years in the sports business,”

Big East commissioner Val Acker-

man said, minutes after she can-

celed the conference’s men’s basket-

ball tournament at Madison Square

Garden at halftime of the day’s first

game between St. John’s University

and Creighton University.

The NBA’s surprise decision late

Wednesday set the stage for other

dominoes to fall on Thursday.

MLS made the first move late in

the morning, saying it would sus-

pend the 2020 season for 30 days

as it “continues to assess the im-

pact of Covid-19,” the disease

caused by the novel coronavirus.

The NHL then announced in the

early afternoon that it would

“pause” its season, calling it “no

longer appropriate to try to con-

tinue to play games at this time,”

particularly after a second player

on the NBA’s Jazz tested positive.

The league added, “Our goal is to

The Day Sports Shut Down

MLBandtheNHLjoinedtheNBAinsuspendinggames,whiletheNCAAcanceledMarchMadness

BYWSJ SPORTSSTAFF

4:16 p.m.

Time the NCAA’s email

canceling spring and

winter championships

went out.