If NCAA Tournament Cancellation Wakes Up Americans to Coronavirus’ Deadly Danger, the Lost Madness Will Have Done Real Good

At their best (or most idealized), sports are supposed to offer a break from the real world. That often may be a false promise, but it’s one thing that brings people back to the games again and again. But sometimes sports can help wake everyone up to how bad things are in the real world.

That is what this wave of cancellations and open-ended “postponements” of some of the world’s biggest sporting events is doing. Should it take the once unfathomable cancellation of the entire NCAA Tournament — America’s March bracket pool obsession — for a large swath of the country to take the coronavirus more seriously?

Probably not — but that does not change the reality of it. The NBA suddenly pausing its season, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer following suit, Major League Baseball pushing back the start of its regular season, conference basketball tournaments abruptly canceling one after the other and finally, the NCAA pulling the plug on all of March Madness, played out like dominos inevitability falling.

One by one, each seemingly hitting harder than the last.

If it took the shock and awe of the cascading cancellations to wake a large segment of the population up to how serious this worldwide health pandemic is… well, maybe sports did do some good before it went on pause.

This does not make the heartbreak of the college basketball players who have seen their March dreams yanked away any less acute or real. Players like University of Houston sophomore Nate Hinton should feel like it’s a punch to the gut. Hinton and thousands of athletes like him having been working since last June’s start of conditioning to get the chance to shine on the NCAA Tournament’s grand stage.

They’ll never get this March back — and most of these players, even the ones good enough to be rotation players on an NCAA Tournament team, will never have an NBA or WNBA moment. If you don’t feel for these young men and women, you probably need to get right behind the Tin Man in the line for hearts.

This is the first time the NCAA Tournament has not been held since 1938 — the year before it existed. A World War, national crises, natural disasters, gas shortages, crippling economic falls… none of it has been able to halt the tournament before. If that does not drive home how different this coronavirus is, how unique of a health challenge it is, few things will.

You can still feel for these college athletes and know that cancelling the NCAA Tournament was the only thing to do.

There is still much uncertainty around this virus, but there is no question what can happen when it escalates. The scenes from Italy, hospitals overwhelmed, only grocery stores and pharmacies allowed to stay open, schools completely shuttered, streets deserted are stark.

That probably should have been enough to wake up most Americans to the real danger. Instead, maybe finally taking away the games that so many of us love, bet on, come together for and obsess over, will.

Big Dance Gone, Limbo, Limbo Elsewhere

Maybe the NBA, which now has two players (Utah Jazz All-Stars Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell) who have tested positive for the virus, will return in time for us to see the wonder of Luka Doncic in the playoffs. But maybe, it won’t.

Maybe, the Houston Astros will get the opportunity to take their boos in every other ballpark in the land. But maybe, they won’t.

No one really knows how this is going to go. The NCAA Tournament completely disappearing from the calendar still seemed completely unfathomable just 48 hours ago. By early Thursday afternoon, the idea of even holding the Big Dance is what seemed completely unimaginable.

It will be beyond strange to have these mammoth stadiums and arenas sit empty, to not have sports on TV. It will not feel anything like life as usual. But maybe that’s what we need right now.

Major sports are gone for now — taken away by a real-life medical pandemic. But maybe they’re doing some real good because of that.

Maybe the loss of the games, the March Madness that never happened, the haunting images of those empty arenas, will save some lives.

Wake-up calls are seldom pretty — and this one is as messy and heartbreaking for many athletes as it gets. It is horrible for them, completely unfair to them. That does not make doing it any less right.