The world of sports has taken a massive hit in the past week. Whole leagues are being suspended, and thousands of players and workers in the sport industry are left wondering if sports will come back this year. This coronavirus pandemic is spreading fast throughout the entire nation, and nobody wants to be the reason that it spreads.
On Wednesday, March 11th sports would be forever changed. The first major domino to fall was the NCAA announcing there would be no fans at this year’s March Madness tournament. This led to everyone else not allowing fans at their events. Things didn’t start moving downhill too fast until Utah Jazz players, Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, tested positive for coronavirus. This caused a major spiraling of events after this.
The NBA immediately announced that they would be suspending their season indefinitely, until this pandemic was under control. With the NBA canceling their season, this made all other major sports take a look into how they were going to handle the situation. On Thursday, March 12th the MLS would vote to suspend their season as well. Later that day, the NHL opted to cancel their season, and the MLB chose to suspend the rest of spring training and delay their opening day by 2 weeks. The last event of the day saw the NCAA officially canceling March Madness.
This could potentially be the worst day in sports history. Within the matter of hours, every major sports league was canceled. Friday, March 13th would also see the suspension of NCAA baseball. In the matter of three days, the sports world as we know it has been forever changed. Nobody knows when sports will come back, and it has left hundreds of thousands without work. Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks has pledged to cover the expenses of all employees due to the closure of the NBA. Many players and owners have followed suit, offering to pay the people who are now out of work due to this tragedy.
The NCAA, realizing that senior’s years have been taken from them, have elected to give every athlete an extra semester of eligibility. Everything has been happening so fast, so I think the NCAA did a good job of coming up with a quick response to this problem by granting players another semester of eligibility. Even with this, many players have played their last game and didn’t even know it. This has been such a rollercoaster of emotions for so many with the cancelation of seasons.
The coronavirus epidemic of 2020 has been the most chaotic thing to ever hit the sports world. While I do see the reason that leagues have been canceled, it is still a devastating blow for everyone in sports. The players whose years have been cut short will forever be affected by this virus. This has been such a heartbreaking situation for sports, and nobody knows when this will all go away and become normal again.
John Marrs Sports Blog 