1-Man’s Opinion on Sports–Monday “The Weekend After–A Strange Feeling”

Posted by on March 16th, 2020  •  0 Comments  • 

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“The Weekend After–A–Strange Feeling’

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This is going to take some time

A hard weekend has come and gone.

America is paralyzed by the Virius-Crisis.  Hopefully progress is being made.

Travel bans, airports clogged with people arriving, Flights cancelled.

Schools closed, university’s shutdown, hospitals feeling the crush of patients.  Shopping centers overwhelmed by binge shoppers stripping shelves clean.

The number of positive tests pass over 300,000 in a two week span.  The fatality rate is climbing.  Testing to hit a high effective on Monday, hopefully upwards of 2M tests this week.

Europe is going on lockdown to stop people travelling.  800-dead in Italy.  The death rate still high in China.  Germany, France, England are fearful.  Spain is in lockdown.

Adidas, Nike, Apple are shutting down all stores globally.

No one knows what Monday brings on a devastated Wall Street-Stock Market.y
And yet conflicting comments.

President Trump telling America we are ‘controlling the virus’.
The lead CDC doctor tells us,’the worst is yet to come’.

There is a lot to talk about in sports, some business as usual, some shutdown, others in trouble.

NFL:  Free agency will begin on Monday at noon, when teams can contact agents and players via Skype to discuss contract offers.  There will be no free agent visits.  There are no visits either for draft picks.  All will be done electronically.  The CBA was approved by the players vote by the slimmest of margins.  The owners have cancelled their West Pam Beach spring meetings.  Next, they may either move the April 23rd draft back a month, or hold it via conference call with no draft party in Las Vegas.  Possible too might be delays in the stat of off season workouts.  This is all fluid, depending what day it is, and what science and doctors have said.

XFL..The new spring league last five weeks and closed its doors, releasing all its players to sign NFL-CFL contracts if they wished.  They say they will attempt to play in 2021.

MLB…Things are changing at warp speed.  First games were cancelled, then spring training shutdown.  Players voted to stay in camp, but then MLB on Sunday afternoon advised teams not to hold group workouts.  They then ordered all minor leaguers sent home, and then banned grouped workouts of veteran players.  The bigger issue may be the delayed start of the regular season.  They are now talking May 1st, or maybe as late as May 31st.  It means a truncated regular season, maybe 140-games.  Maybe a different playoff structure.  Maybe an ALCS-NLCS and World Series, moved to a neutral sight, warm weather city or domed stadium, if post season winds up being pushed into November.  Minor League baseball is also off the schedule, till May 1st at the earliest.

NBA..Players testing positive drove the league to suspend all operations.  It does not appear the regular season will restart.  Now the question, do we go right to the playoffs, and when does that kick into gear.  Of real concern, at least 4-teams had contact with the Utah Jazz and Detroit Pistons, who have both had players test positive.  Do we wake up one morning with more teams showing positive tests.

NCAA…Tone deaf initially, they shutdown the tournament because they had no choice, especially when some venues showed up as hot spots, New York, Seattle, the Bay Area.  They refused to release what the 68-team pairings looked like.  They did admit, they were about to move on a 16-team tourney this coming Thursday-thru-Monday, all games in Atlanta, but they backed out on that.

NCAA…They then announced the end of all spring sports, from baseball thru track, tennis and all.  They are talking granting an extra year of eligibility to all spring sports athletes.  Spring football has been shutdown and unless school-classes start up, that may be the end of workouts on the field.

NHL…They shutdown the schedule, they banned players from practice facilities, they stopped play in all the minor leagues and in junior hockey immediately.  If they are shutdown a month, they might just go directly to an NHL playoff format in May, but these players would need time to get back into game skating conditioning.  The season might be over.  The AHL, ECHL, all of the Canadian Junior Leagues, plus every league but the KHL in Russia ceased operations.  Also gone the Frozen Four-NCAA-finals.

GOLF…The Masters has been cancelled at Augusta.  Look for a possible push to put it somewhere on in fall.  The PGA cancelled the next four stops of the tour, most of them in Texas..  The LPGA ended the Kia Classic, the tourney at Rancho Mirage among the three early season tour stops.

SOCCER…MLS has shutdown for possibly a month, and so have all the lower level leagues.  The legendary English Premeir League stopped play for a month and maybe the rest of the year, when positive tests showed up with members of the Arsenal team.  They have cancelled the Champions League and Europa League too.  Every league in Europe is closed down now, epicenter of the virus.

NASCAR…At the last minute cancelled the Atlanta 500 and the Miami 400, and may have to cut deeper into their schedule because of the number of fans in the stand, who might show up.

INDY CAR….The first four races of the season are going to be dark.  Everything leading up to mid May is off the schedule.  The Indy 500-come Memorial Day weekend, we can only hope.  Gone off the schedule, the St-Petersburg Grand Prix, Alabama Grand Prix, and the Long Beach Grand Prix.  There might be some schedule slots later in the season, to re-book the road events.

FORMULA 1….The Australian Grand Prix was wiped from the books when some members of Team McLaren tested positive.  Hot spots claimed the Chinese Grand Prix, the Grand Prix of Vietnam, and Bahrain Gand Prix, all big money events.

TENNIS…The federations have wiped out at least the next three tourneys for international stars.

It is a different week ahead of us, as strange as the sports weekend we just came thru.

Hoping our country leadership can get infront of this, and that science and medicine can put a lid of the explosive spread of this.  The task force is meeting around the clock.

You hope we do not have a national lockdown.  The potential consequence is so dangerous.

We miss sports don’t we?  We need medical science will solve this.  The economic setback to our country seems to be devastating.

Free agency and opening days and playoff races don’t seem to be very important.  Sanitizing and washing your hands and self-isolation is more important now than anything else in our world.

For the first time in a long time, being a Republican or a Democrat no longer means anything.  Being a good American is more critical now that ever.  Sports fans should know and heed that right now.

For the first time since days after the 9-11 Twin Tower tragedy, America needs to unify again, to get thru the next couple of weeks.

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