Can college sports upset the coronavirus? Cross your toes and hold your breath.
Really, the message should be: Hey folks, bear with us, we’re trying to thread a needle here. In a dark room. With our eyes closed.
It’s really difficult. As coronavirus cases rise, as we experience either a flare-up of the first wave or the intense start of a second wave, the idea of having athletes participate in fall sports is becoming trickier with each passing day.
Tuesday morning, the University of Louisville announced it was shutting down voluntary workouts by its men’s basketball program after two unnamed members tested positive for COVID-19. U of L did not say if the two members were players, coaches or staff members. As of Tuesday afternoon, one was feeling better, the other still showed symptoms.
The Cardinals had worked out for a month before throwing up the stop sign. Vince Tyra, U of L’s athletic director, focused on the inevitability. “We don’t think we were naive about that,” he said on a Tuesday teleconference.
Yet not all schools are on the same protocol page. Louisville is testing for COVID. UK is testing for antibodies. Only when its student-athletes show symptoms are virus tests administered. Some schools are releasing numbers. Other are playing it closer to the vest.
Louisville’s shutdown is to last two weeks. But what if two positive tests occur in season? Or during the NCAA Tournament? Or, even worse, right before tip-off of this season’s UK-U of L clash? Yikes?
“There might be a forfeit,” Tyra said. “Hard to believe that would occur, but we’re dealing with it for the first time.”
Look at Major League Baseball. Scheduled to start July 23, the sport saw three of its franchises cancel Monday workouts because they (a) had not received test results from the week before or (b) no one had shown up to administer the tests. Score that an error.
Then there are the ones that have already tested positive, such as Freddie Freeman, the best player on the Atlanta Braves. Freeman’s wife, Chelsea, relayed on social media that coronavirus had hit her 30-year-old husband, “like a ton of bricks.” And after teammate Nick Markakis had a chat with Freeman about the virus, Markakis decided that, you know what, I think I’ll sit this 2020 thing out. Mike Leake. Ryan Zimmerman. Ian Desmond. David Price. They’ve all said thanks, but no thanks. See you in 2021.
Same thing with the NBA. Several pro hoopsters have decided they’ll skip the Orlando bubble when the league presses the restart button on July 30. Trevor Ariza. Avery Bradley. Spencer Dinwiddie. DeAndre Jordan. Ex-Cat Willie Cauley-Stein. They’re all passing on Disney World.
As for college football, SEC Network centerpiece Paul Finebaum told Scott Fowler of the Charlotte Observer it’s hard to imagine a full season played in the scheduled order. Finebaum said he’s leaning toward a late September start and thinks non-conference games are in jeopardy. Perhaps all SEC teams will play just eight SEC games. Makes sense.
Bottom line: The virus rules. And like it or not, we’ve done a terrible job of controlling this virus — from the federal government to the guy at the grocery store who refuses to wear a mask. As a state, Kentucky has done better than most, but not all our sporting events are to take place in the commonwealth — though that is a thought. Maybe Kentucky could play Louisville, Western Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky and Murray State with trips to Cincinnati and Marshall. Would we settle for that?
“We’re only going to see the headlines where there’s bad news,” Tyra said Tuesday. “We don’t see where there’s good news.”
So maybe we shouldn’t overreact either way. Cross your fingers that baseball starts without a hitch. Cross your toes pro basketball follows suit. If they can make it work, maybe college football can, too. And college basketball?
“We just thought let’s take a timeout,” said Tyra of the U of L shutdown. “And catch our breath.”
Before we get back to holding it.
