March 11, 2020: A Day We've Never Seen In Sports
If you care about sports, you know the story by now.
The Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder were set to tip-off in a midweek matchup Wednesday night. After an unusually long delay by the referees to start the game, curiosity grew.
Fans, players and the broadcast all seemed confused about what the hold up was. Moments later, it was announced that Utah center Rudy Gobert had COVID-19, more commonly known as Coronavirus.
Upon that knowledge, both teams were quarantined in their respective locker rooms and fans were told to exit the arena. Little did most know at the time, but this game would be just a part of a day never seen before in the history of sports.
Within hours, everything imaginable was getting canceled in the sports world. The NCAA had already announced that March Madness would be played without fans this season. When that announcement was made in the afternoon of March 11, it felt like enormous news. Later that night, it was a ticker topic on the bottom of sports channels.
The NBA elected to postpone the season shortly after what happened in Oklahoma City. Now?
Everything in the sports world is getting canceled: college basketball conference tournaments, other collegiate sports in season, spring football games, The Players Championship and The Masters in golf, etc.
By Thursday afternoon, seemingly every major upcoming sporting event was either canceled or moving towards that. The NCAA announced Thursday that March Madness, along with every other winter and spring sport championship is canceled for the season.
Unreal.
March 11, 2020, is a day that is unprecedented in the sports world. We have never seen anything like this. From the mere idea of playing games without crowds, to Gobert jokingly touching everyone's stuff days before he was actually infected with the virus, to the NBA indefinitely putting the 2020 season on pause, this is brand new to all of us.
Players and coaches aren't sure how to prepare now. Fans don't know how to process it and media aren't quite sure how to cover this. All any of us really know for sure as sports enthusiasts is we will all remember where we were on March 11, 2020.
Unfortunately, these postponements and cancellations are likely going to cost those that put these events on millions of dollars. Fortunately, they're doing it anyway.
This could potentially change the perspective on sports entirely. We, as sports consumers are accustomed to athletics on our televisions and our phones constantly. We love sports. That's why fans watch it with so much passion and that's why a lot of us work in it.
But games, even games that produce millions, are not as important as the health of people, involved in sports or not. The reality is that the large crowds that sporting events draw caters to more people getting sick.
And eventually, when the virus dissipates and life returns to normal and athletics return to action, sports will unite us as they always do. The very reason that sports need to be canceled right now, will be the same reason that sports will be so crucial after this is over.
That same collection of people, gathered to enjoy watching athletes do what they do best, has an impact on people that nothing else seems to have. When the time is right, it will give us the comfort we desperately need.
