KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Hour by hour now, it seems, the COVID-19 coronavirus creeps further into our collective consciousness … and range.
With that has emerged a sense of flux from which precious little appears immune — including in a sports world facing unprecedented dilemmas as its members try to navigate the difference between practicality and panic and play on.
So it is that at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby could make the point that no medical advisers or officials have told the conference not to play its men’s and women’s tournaments here this week, or that they shouldn’t play in front of a crowd …
The unstated but hovering word you hear is “yet.”
“It’s very much a ‘make decisions as you go’ situation,” Bowlsby said.
Because everything is provisional on the sports landscape for the foreseeable future and particularly when it comes to March Madness.
And we’ve got a living, breathing (and hopefully not coughing) microcosm of it here this week, with Bowlsby thankfully willing to be candid and expansive about the scenarios to a degree few in such positions have offered to now.
Speaking hours after the Ivy League announced it had canceled its four-team conference tournament, Bowlsby noted some of the differences between that format and this, and the level of known infections on the East Coast and Kansas City.
Stressing that he was speaking as a layman, he acknowledged his understanding through the University of Kansas Medical Center and CDC that the disease will continue to spread across the country.
And that they don’t want to put anyone unnecessarily at risk.
And that this event could yet be canceled, before it starts Wednesday or even along the way to the championship games, among other possibilities they’ve had to consider.
“I think the next real decision threshold is going to be, ‘Do you play in front of fans?’” he said. “And do you assemble 15-16-17,000 people in an enclosed area?”
Late Tuesday afternoon, the MAC announced that fans would not be allowed at its tournament. Noting that the Big 12 will be interested to see what comes of an NBA owners’ meeting expected to take up that topic, he added, “I wouldn’t say that our situation is just exactly like theirs. But we certainly want to learn from what other people are doing.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal regarding the implications for the upcoming NCAA Tournament, NCAA chief medical officer Brian Hainline called such a notion a “worst-case scenario.”
Then again, it was in play last weekend when Division III tournament games were conducted at an empty venue at Johns Hopkins.
