Will COVID-19 be the needle that finally bursts the sports bubble?

Yes. It will.

 

If the NBA and NHL really want to do playoffs when all this is over ...

Regular season is done
Take the four division champions
1 vs 4, 2 vs 3
Winners meet for title
Move on
That’s figuring some time in the summer

 

There isn't going to be anymore NBA or NHL this season. Baseball's got like an 0.1 percent chance of some kind of season. MAYBE those golf majors in October and November will happen -- without spectators. NBA and NHL start again in December at the earliest. NFL is kidding itself. PS: If sports do resume this fall, there is no question the event-linked coronavirus will be at an SEC football game, probably the Florida-Tennessee game.

 

Welcome to Sports Talk, March 18, 2020!

 

There is a LOT to unpack on this.

I'll do the easy ones first.
The Rio in Las Vegas needs to be torn down. It was showing its age 20 years ago! I know you've got Palms and Gold Coast nearby but I-15 really splits it.
Iowa State always runs thin margins. They're shelling out for Matt Campbell and the program still gets a few million in taxpayer money.

My son is committed to a college program for August but now we're watching this all REAL closely. If there is no college soccer in August, I think he should take a gap year, work full-time, play semi-pro in town and come back for 2021 as a freshman. You only get four years to play before you have to hang 'em up. If nothing else, he can re-apply elsewhere and see if any better avenues open up.

Once this blows through, college sports will have far less money to spend.

Football and men's basketball will get their cut but the non-revenue sports will get trimmed even more.

Alabama football will always rake in cash but will Marshall or Tulane generate enough to cover all the program's bills?

 

So, when we're down to 500 or so positive tests across the entire country, you still keep everything shut down?

 

I'm in my 15th year of teaching at one of the schools in a Power 5 conference. I've had a bunch of athletes in my classes, and with the exception of two football players and one jackass football student assistant whose family is football royalty at this school, most of them have been pretty good students. Equestrian athletes have done the best. Baseball players have done really well as have track and field athletes. Do they have extra academic help over in the athletic center? Yep, but they still (usually) do well when they're in class.

There was a football player in my class during a recent spring semester. He tore his ACL (I believe that was the injury) during spring practice, had surgery and didn't miss a day of class. And at the end of the semester, I made sure I emailed the athletic academic folks to let them know how much I appreciated that.

 

The draft and midweek games have to be the two biggest reasons that baseball graduation rates are so low. Midweek games are far too numerous.

 

If you're a football player, and a teammate tests positive, you going out there and playing that weekend? What about if you're on the opposing team? Like, it's somewhat easy to discuss hypotheticals about "business needing to get back on track," but yeah, I think people are going to be reluctant to do *anything* if there are still like, 500k cases out there. Today in Texas, there was a nursing home that thought it had its first patient test positive this week - They tested everyone, and they had something like 85 positives. With team sports, it'll spread like wildfire.

 

The draft, definitely. Most midweek games are drive up that day, drive back that night. And most baseball players take online classes.

 

If that's the standard, though, no one can ever leave the house, no shelter-in-place orders can be lifted, nothing can ever be done until we know for certain we've eradicated the virus. Worldwide. Because how do you know for certain that no one is infected? In theory, a small outbreak in Nigeria two years from now would restart this entire process.
In other words, it's economic ruin for every country on Earth and the end of the world as we know it and the start of every bad dystopian sci-fi scenario you can imagine. At some point, cold as it sounds, you have to find an acceptable level of risk or else you'll lose everything else.

 

I would think the draft has more to do with it. Because of the scholarship limit, I think a lot of baseball players are on other forms of financial aid that might be tied in to maintaining a decent GPA.