SEC suspends spring sports through March because of coronavirus fears
The stands of Bridgestone Arena were supposed to be buzzing with fans for 12-plus hours, as SEC basketball teams battled in pursuit of a conference title.
Instead, the seats were eerily empty, as conference commissioner Greg Sankey did a TV interview with maybe 25 people around him.
Not long before that, the Southeastern Conference had announced Thursday it has suspended all spring sports until March 30 in response to growing concerns about the coronavirus.
“Based on the latest developments and the continued spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), the Southeastern Conference today announced the suspension of regular season competition for teams in all sports on SEC campuses, as well SEC championship events, until March 30,” the league said in a statement.
Staffers from the Arkansas basketball team, which South Carolina was supposed to play, were spotted sitting around their hotel, with their bus waiting outside.
In addition, Sankey announced all on- and off-campus recruiting activities will be suspended through March 30 as well. Sankey said he texted NCAA president Mark Emmert to suggest that move.
The SEC’s decision comes after the league announced earlier Thursday that it had canceled the men’s basketball tournament. South Carolina was scheduled to play Arkansas in the tourney on Thursday night. The Gamecocks were also set to host Tennessee in baseball and LSU in softball this weekend.
How exactly the seasons will proceed, if at all, after March 30, is an open-ended question at the moment.
In a press conference, Sankey said the conference simply didn’t know how long things might last and where things stood on a range of situations affected.
“A number of you will ask about return to play. We have work to do there,” Sankey said. “I don’t have all of the answers. I told my staff I don’t know is a perfectly good answer from time to time. It can’t just be I don’t know. You’re going to have to do the work to engage and learn how to answer the question eventually. So we’ve created an interim period where we will work with our campuses to determine how we return to our normal operation. It may not be March 30. It may be beyond. But that remains to be seen.”
Sankey got emotional at one point, discussing the tornado-affected SEC tournament in 2008, saying he wanted to give players the chance for the kind of moment he saw there. But he also said the NBA’s decision to suspend the season seemed to shake the basketball players and coaches.
Gamecocks coach Frank Martin commended the decision Sankey made after the two spoke Thursday morning.
“It was the right decision to make, and I let him know that I was really proud that he took his position of leadership and was willing to make this decision,” Martin said.
Back on South Carolina’s campus, baseball coach Mark Kingston held a press conference early Thursday afternoon to preview the weekend series with Tennessee but spent most of the time answering questions about the novel virus, which has been declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. Players scheduled to speak were not made available, and microphones typically handed to reporters were not used either.
While Kingston was speaking, conference basketball tournaments were being canceled, but the SEC had yet to announce the full suspension of spring sports. The conference had said Wednesday that the general public would be barred from sporting events, but after the NBA announced a player had tested positive for the coronavirus and suspended its season Wednesday night, things rapidly shifted.
And Kingston himself acknowledged that he and his staff were prepared for anything to happen in the near future. When asked how he felt for those coaches and players whose seasons had already been canceled, he kept perspective.
“It’s sports, but people put so much into this. Coaches do, players do, parents do. You’re talking about parents that may not watch their kids play again. I sent a text to (coach) Dan Pepicelli earlier today, who we just played with Cornell — their season’s over. And so I sent him a text this morning just saying, ‘Hey we’re thinking about you guys,’” Kingston said.
“So it’s unfortunate. It’s life, you know, it’s life smacking everybody in the face and, you know, the highest level of this is the people that are struggling to stay alive with it. But a lot of people invest a lot of time and effort and passion into sports, and for a lot of people’s sports is their whole life. And so, yeah, you feel empathy for everybody going through this whether it’s big or small.”
Roughly 20 minutes later, the SEC announced the suspension.
This story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 12:31 PM.
