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“Sports-Closed for Business”

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Sports is closed for business, but is now open for ideas….how to save-salvage-start back up their seasons.

So what has it been like for you?  You know, not to have games to watch, sporting events to attend, even people to talk to you about your team?

It has been weird for Joe Sixpack, to sit at home, with no games on TV.  To see your newspaper reduced to a page and a half, with hardly any stories or interesting comments.  To listen to sports-talk radio babble on about your favorite memory, player, first game you saw etc.etc.

People have tried.  The UT put together the March Movie madness bracket of 64.  Very novel.

ESPN had the best 64-college mascots in a showdown.

The standard jokes bouncing around twitter…”so that’s what a black TV screen looks like”…..or “I sat next to this woman for an hour in the living room-had a nice chat-oh she’s my wife”.

And it goes on and on.

But sports has real issues.  Games to be played, schedules needed to be worked, TV contracts to be renegotitated.  And where oh were do you put these events on the calendar if you are going to start up the season.

Here’s a scorecard of cancellations.

NFL DRAFT…The league will make it a TV studio event and says it will go on with teams making selections via video conference, with cut ins from all team War rooms, and interviews with draft picks from their homes.  Not audience (fans) in attendance.

NFL MINI CAMPS…Growing concern there should be no OTA workouts, the would span 7-weeks.  Maybe a long mini-camp, then training camps that open in July.  Maybe they push this further back, and dump a couple of preseason games.

MARCH MADNESS…The NCAA tourney makes 350M for the NCAA-gone just like that.  The trickle down effect terribly damaging for all types of University athletic programs, big and small.

BASEBALL..Delayed opening day, with the hope now of a 142-game schedule on June 1st, the would push the season farther back into October.  Now a sales pitch, postseason games in warm weather cities and domed stadiums in November.

BASKETBALL..The push to restart in June and play out the schedule, then get to the playoffs.  This time, you might be playing into August.  The NBA draft will likely be pushed back too, to late summer.  But this means very short off season to get to full schedule for start of next season in fall.

HOCKEY…Forget the rest of the regular season, and go directly into the playoffs.  The NHL has already inquired about arena dates in July and August.  About the ice conditions that time of year?  They have already postponed the NHL draft for June 26th, and can push the back into late July.

KENTUCKY DERBY…Cancelled but will be rescheduled Labor Day weekend in Louisville for that Saturday, going head to head with college football.

MASTERS…Deleted from it spring slot, but you know fall in Augusta can be nice.  Where do you slot it into the Fed Ex playoff series.

PGA-LPGA GOLF….Have cancelled a combined 14-tourneys we won’t see makeup dates for.

TOKYO OLYMPICS…It took two weeks of criticism but the IOC cancelled it and moved it to 2021…same spot…same location.  The financial ruin is catastrophic.  10B-dollars in corporate advertising sponsors, billions in global TV contracts, all to be delayed for a full 12-months.

INDY 500…Now postponed and will be rescheduled August 23rd-easily done because Indy car racing has so many open weekends.

NASCAR…Big trouble because they have already wiped out 7-races, and how do you reschedule 7-events in a schedule that seldom has weekends off in its 36-event schedule.  Maybe you back-end load makeup dates and push the final Chase for the Championship race into December.  They ran the Daytona 500, but may have lost the Talladega 500.

FORMULA 1…Enormous geography problems, in that they have now taken 8-races off the books, and you might not want to, probably cannot, go back to places like China, Korea, India and Viet Nam to make up cancelled races.

BOSTON MARATHON…Just celebrate Patriots Day in the fall, and they will September 14th.

FRENCH OPEN..Where on the tennis calendar can you place this two week event.  Bigger concern, what is to become of Wimbledon?  Will the US Open be impacted late summer?

MLS SOCCER….They could solve this all, if they reschedule and make everybody play two games a week, but you have to worry about the Virus hot spots like New York and Seattle.

ENGLISH PREMEIR LEAGUE…Soccer has already deleted the Champions Leaue and the EUROPA CUP…so there are late season dates and just extend the schedule.  Ditto for all the European and Asiatic leagues, but how can you ever consider starting up again in Italy and Spain this year?

You might be good at Rubic’s cube games or crossword puzzles.  If so, call a league nearby you, for this will be a huge global challenge to get sports back up on line.

In the meantime, enjoy taking to the wife, looking at vacation pictures, or lifetime CNN shows, tweeting, instagramming, or surfing the internet for something good to read..

Sports-closed for business.  Who knows how, when, what shape it will be in when they reopen.

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