Pat Forde Gives Thoughts On Recent Developments In College Sports

The last three days have been unprecedented for college athletics and players, coaches, family members, fans and media that love and cover the sport.

For Sports Illustrated writer Pat Forde, the experience impacted him on a number of levels. Forde was sitting inside Banker's Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, waiting to cover the Big Ten Tournament game between Michigan and Rutgers when news broke the game, and ultimately, the tournament had been cancelled.

Within 24 hours the entire season was cancelled, as were all spring and winter NCAA championships. Forde wrote about his experience covering the tournament, which ended with the two teams going through warm ups.

But for Forde, the impact of the events went far beyond how it affected him being able to do his job.

If you follow him on twitter then you've seen plenty of swimming tweets from the long-time sportswriter. There's a reason, as all three of his children were college swimmers. His youngest son, Michael, saw his collegiate swimming career come to an end when the NCAA made its decision to cancel the season.

"Every athlete’s career comes with an expiration date, and the lucky ones can delay that for a long time," Forde wrote. "My kid was lucky enough to swim past the expiration date for most of his high school peers and competitors. But March 12, 2020, wasn’t supposed to be his expiration date."

Forde's piece on this in outstanding, and gave a different look than I can provide as just someone covering one program. I'd encourage you to give it a read. You can read the entire piece HERE.