Lost Gamecocks seasons, the right call, facing skepticism around coronavirus and sports
The scene in Nashville at the SEC tournament was probably less eerie than others around the sports world yesterday.
An arena that should’ve been full was empty. A commissioner who should’ve been hobnobbing as sports administrators do was answering questions without answers as to when games might be played again. Instead of warming up, teams were waiting in hotels as staffers scrambled to get them home.
And that’s in a place where no team took the court or staged a trophy presentation in front of no one in particular.
This great machine that presses ever forward, to new seasons, to new championships, came to a halt. And now we wait.
In the end, a chain reaction that led to a cataclysmic moment in the world of sports was almost assuredly the right decision. If it can help on the safety front in any tangible way, it’s worth it.
As he stood in a hallway of a hotel, minutes before his team boarded a bus, ready to fly home hours before its first scheduled SEC tournament game, Gamecocks basketball coach Frank Martin talked about what we do not yet understand, dealing with a situation the scale of which most are not able to get their hands around.
“It’s just unknown,” Martin said. “It’s not an earthquake, it’s not a hurricane, it’s not a tornado. It’s unknown.”
This is all unknown, and in the moment, it seems prudent to rely on the expertise of the medical community.
What is known is that if you care about college sports, your heart breaks for the seniors on all these teams.
Careers are supposed to end with a certain kind of closure. It’s usually in defeat, usually tearful, but it’s still in the crucible of competition.
Instead, many Gamecocks found out on spring break or hours before a game. The women’s basketball team was days away from learning who it would face as a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. The men’s basketball team was ready for its longshot chance to chase the tournament at all.
Some seniors are luckier than others. Ty Harris and Mikiah Herbert Harrigan were at least rotation players on a national title team, something they lost the chance to be again in the coming weeks. A spring grad transfer in Dallas Beaver got to play all of 14 games as a Gamecock.
“To all the fams , I’m hurt that we don’t get to spend the month with you guys in Greenville and hear you guys yell my name after the game,” Harris wrote on Instagram. “To my sisters, we’ve been dreaming of this moment since pre-season and for us to be this close and get it taken away from us is heart breaking. I wanted you guys to experience everything tht I experienced my freshman year.”
In this kind of adversity, there are always lessons about the arbitrary nature of the world and bouncing back. But for now, there’s hurt and uncertainty, as some events (spring sports after March 30) remain in limbo.
And then the question of skepticism has to be addressed.
Through much of Wednesday and Thursday, there were undercurrents that this was an overreaction, a case of hysteria and worry gone to the next level in a time where hysteria comes in a new flavor each day. Partial statistics get cited. Ulterior motives get blamed. This kind of disruption always brings with it a level of skepticism that rests in that uncanny valley between potentially prudent and possibly dangerous.
In the end, hopefully the skeptics are right. Hopefully in a month, some loudmouth will be telling everyone who will listen all this pain and angst was for naught.
Because that means people are safe, it means they’re healthy and it means something cataclysmic was averted.
But we’re a long way from that right now.
Sports will come back. They always do. Seasons give way to new seasons and everything starts again.
This is a disruption. In an everything-is-immediate society, that feels alien. But sports are built on ever-renewing anticipation cycles, and that return becomes another thing to look forward to.
