The sports industry has shut down almost entirely for the first time since the aftermath of 9/11, and there is no immediate end in sight.
In addition to the suspension of the NBA season and cancellation of all NCAA winter and spring championships, both of which were previously noted on this site, the past 24 hours has seen the suspension of the NHL, MLS and XFL seasons, a two-week delay of Major League Baseball Opening Day, and the cancellations of the Formula 1 season opener, UEFA Champions League matches, U.S. soccer friendlies and — late Thursday night — the PGA Tour Players Championship.
The Players, which took place as scheduled Thursday in front of spectators, had been set to continue in front of essential personnel before the PGA Tour evidently thought better of it. The next three tournaments will also be called off.
NASCAR will continue to run its next two races as scheduled without fans in attendance. IndyCar is also set to run its season opener on Sunday.
The rash of postponements and cancellations are part of an effort to reduce the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, which is said to be significantly deadlier than the normal flu. The virus has killed thousands worldwide (including 1,000 in Italy alone), but the death toll has been far lower in countries — like South Korea — that have taken strict measures to halt its spread.
While sporting events worldwide have been affected by the virus for weeks, it took until the cancellation of the Indian Wells tennis tournament on Sunday before North American sports were impacted. As recently as 48 hours ago, the plan for the NBA, NHL and NCAA Tournament was to conduct games in front of mostly empty arenas. The calculus changed after NBA Utah Jazz C Rudy Gobert was diagnosed with the disease on Wednesday.
The NBA suspended its season within minutes of news breaking about Gobert, and the league was followed on Thursday by a steady drip of college basketball conference tournament cancellations, suspensions of the other active pro leagues, and eventually the loss of the NCAA Tournament.
The current situation is not the first of its kind in sports, coming nearly 18 years after pro and college leagues shut down in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. While that hiatus lasted a week, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on TNT Thursday that his league would not return for at least 30 days. ESPN.com reported that the NHL will be gone a minimum of two weeks, or perhaps a month.
On Thursday, which was to be one of the busiest college basketball days of the year, the only live sports were the first half of the St. John’s-Creighton Big East Tournament game on FS1, MEAC women’s quarterfinals on FloHoops, a spring training game on MLB Network and the Players Championship on Golf Channel.
ESPN filled time with SportsCenter, which will comprise the vast majority of its schedule for the foreseeable future. TNT, which was slated for an NBA doubleheader, instead aired a live Inside the NBA special and a rebroadcast of the NBA All-Star Game.
COVID-19 is the latest development in what has been a truly disgusting start to the decade in sports. It was less than two months ago that Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gigi, and seven others were killed in a helicopter crash, one of the most shocking and tragic stories in the history of North American sports.
That the Bryant tragedy will ultimately not be the most significant sports news story of the year — much less the first three months of the year — is staggering. Unthinkable is the new normal.
