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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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Sports Fans–Unchartered Waters”

 

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This is such a different time for sports fans.

This is such a scary time in society.

 

The US is paralyzed by Covid-19, the Chinese imported coronavirus.

 

The fallout, the infections, the deaths, have brought the sports world to its knees, to a halt.

 

We’ve had games stopped before.  Our society was rocked by 9-11.  The aftershocks led to the cancellation of games in baseball, the NFL, college football and more.

 

Baseball seasons have been impeded by work stoppages and disputes with the owners and unions.

 

The NFL had a bitter work stoppage in 1987 for a three week window.

 

The ugliest of all was the NHL cancelling an entire hockey season in a war over a new deal involving free agency and demands from its union.

 

But this is a first, an epidemic, a sickness, a non-controllable virus, that has felled sports.

 

In our lifetime, this has the potential to be as deadly as the first plague of our modern life, the Influenza outbreak o 1918 at the end of World War I.  It killed hundreds of thousands around the globe.  There was no medicine to stop it.

 

Modern day trauma says the polio outbreak in the mid 1950’s, the one that attacked children around the US, was scary till the Salk vaccine saved society..

 

We have lived thru Ebola, Legionnaires Disease, the SARS infections and more.

 

But this outbreak is scary, for much like the early 1900s, there is no game-plan yet how to create a vaccine to fight it.

 

So the NBA season ceases when the first two players from the Utah Jazz test positive.  An NBA ref has now been identified as a third victim.

 

March Madness was finally cancelled a day after they said they’d play games behind locked doors in arenas.

 

Baseball shutdown before someone got infected, putting all in jeopardy   Hockey red-flagged the majors leagues, the minor leagues and all of junior hockey.

 

MLS soccer followed suit, then college’s shutdown all their spring sports, and padlocked their winter sports championships.

 

Odd, that the PGA is playing this weekend at the TPC tourney at Sawgrass, but with no fans, while the LPGA cancelled its next 3-tourneys.  Tennis won’t play for an indefinite period.

 

Auto racing will run in Atlanta this weekend  but with no fans in the stands.  The same for Indy car racing starting its season with the St Petersburg Grand Prix.  The Formula 1-season runs the Australian Grand Prix, without fans.  The NHRA cancelled this weekends drag racing schedule.

 

The NFL will conduct its business starting Monday, not face-to-face, but by Skype.  That will be followed by free agency, and possibly still the NFL draft.  The upstart XFL ceased operation after just 5-weeks of play.

 

No games, no trades, no storylines for possibly 30-days, maybe as long as 2-months.  It will be a different weekend ahead of us, because now it is a very different life in front of us.

 

Self-isolation may be the only way to beat down this virus.  Not having games to watch will feel weird.  Not feeling comfortable going out in large crowds will be different too.

 

We won’t be following roster cuts or free agency or basketball-baseball games.  We will instead be following reports of “break the chain-the spreading of the disease.’  That becomes the most important thing we will pay attention too starting this weekend.

 

We’ve cancelled everything in our sporting life, because that may be the only way to roadblock the damage happening to our lives.  Once that is done, maybe the games begin.

 

Disneyland is closing.  Broadway has gone dark.  Colleges are sending students home.  The norm is now gone.

 

But for now, America has shutdown.

 

But it will be very different going forward, a new norm in our life.

 

 

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“Games–Wins-Losses or Death?”

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“Pandemic”…..a word you have ever hardly heard across America.  And now you have, as the Virus-Crisis grows day-by-day.  Our world is changing, rapidly, without our approval.

And yet some in the sports world want to carry on as if nothing serious is happening and the world should go on.

In what should be an ‘hour-by-hour’ discussion, the NBA has suspended its season, when the Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert was diagnosed after contracting the virus.

That came hours after the NCAA  decided to ban fans from its tournament  that is supposed to start next week.

The NHL, MLB are still going ahead with plans to play games, infront of jam packed arenas and spring training venues, but that should change next..

Places where fans gather to cheer, scream, and unknowingly, possibly pass on the Coronavirus from China, should all be shutdown..

It has spread at wild fire rates, a killing field in Seattle, a flash outbreak in New Rochelle, New York.  How the virus’ got there so quickly, no one knows.  What we do know however, the numbers of who tested positive, and the death rates that have occurred in under one week.

March Madness was supposed to start next week, and it would have been Madness to allow all these games to start next Thursday infront of packed houses.  The fans, wearing their colors, won’t be able to cheer their teams, but they won’t get sick either.

The NCAA finally acted, shutting down all the arenas where next week, the post season tournaments are to be played.  Games will go on, but there will be no fans allowed in. Watch it on TV.

Strange atmosphere for sure, but we don’t need to trigger ‘killing zones’.

While the NCAA gave out its ‘close the door’ marching orders, the PAC-12 Conference tournament, was allowed to begin in Las Vegas.  So said controversial Commissioner Larry Scott.  What happens in Vegas-won’t stay in Vegas this time.   What a callous leader he is.

Much like President Donald Trump, who refused to follow the lead of people who know, the doctors and the scientists, he keeps telling people, all will be better and the numbers will go down.  The sickness scoreboard does not show that.  No Trump jokes nor explanations can explain why there was  the White House leadership inertia.

This is almost as bad as China covering up the initial outbreak, and trying to silence the doctors who discovered it, then died from it two weeks ago.

The President, who must have gotten his degree from his own Trump University, doesn’t want to listen to science and people who know, just wants to blame Democrats, or China, or crack jokes and laugh his way thru this.

CDC and WHO officers said Thursday the mortality rate in the US from this could be 10-times what the flu fatality rate is, and yet people like Trump-Scott want life to go on as normal.

The NBA acted.  The NCAA should reconsider.  The NHL should to the same.

Play the games, protect the people who work in the arenas, and protect the fans.  But there seems to be more inherent dangers.

Baseball’s opening day is just 2-weeks out and Rob Manfred, much like Adam Silver and Gary Bettman are monitoring the situation hour-by-hour.  They should close up shop for two weeks, reschedule games if necessary, but do not expose people to risk.

Oh there are stupid comments, like LeBron James initial comment, I won’t play if the fans don’t come.  Wonder if he’d play if his teenage son came home exposed to the disease.  Superman-Stupid ass comment.

The games right now are meaningless.  The outcomes are unimportant.  What is most critical is this does not become what China has become, a ‘toxic culture’ because they covered all this up.

There is no immunity, no vaccine, and no way to control this unless we self discipline American fans, and keep them from catching the virus and then spreading it.

This isn’t something just happening in another far-away country or some third world nation.  It’s at our doorstep, in our national lifestyle.  We don’t want it in our bloodstream.

We don’t want panic.  We don’t want sickness.  The stock market has an illness now-global panic.  The US leadership, government to sports, needs to put a lid on this as best they can.

Don’t care about the standings, the scoreboard, or the playoff races.  Care that me and my family don’t get sick, my neighbor stays healthy, and this does not spread beyond the (1,110) here in the US already afflicted over just the last two weeks..

We shouldn’t care the next two weeks about wins or losses.  We have to be concerned about things that lead to ‘Death’ if the games are allowed to go on.

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“Aztecs Basketball….Sit & Wait”

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San Diego State is (30-2) and ranked 6th in the nation.

They wait now till Selection Sunday to see where, who they play.

They will get rested, they will get a player back in the lineup, they will be ready to go.

Coach Brian Dutcher:

..2-days of rest coming off the tourney loss.
..Begin prep for tourney on Tuesday-get this team better
..10-days off..rejuvenate-get our legs right
..We are beat up from 3-games in 3-days..good to get week and a half off
..We need to work on timing, spacing on set plays, on time-on target.
..We need to perfect things
..We lost 2-games by 6-points…close games help us prepare for March
..Matchups will be everything in the NCAA tourney game
..There are so many close games
..We do practice half court shots each day
..Holding out hope Nathan Mensah can play…2-doctors meetings this week
..He is going 100 miles an hour in practice-full workouts
..We don’t have someone with a 7-foot wingspan-so he would help us
..He has not had any contact workouts…working without contact
..His timing will be good if he is ready to play
..Nathan brings tremendous defensive presence inside on offense-defense
..We don”t have anything like Nate on this roster-definitely missed him
..Shortened bench has not hurt us…AG Aroup- has played well with 8-man group.
..We are past the loss to Utah State
..Time off allows us to create some things to run others have not seen
..Let’s put 1-thing in that is dangerous in March other’s haven’t seen
..For these players, be on March Madness stage is exciting for us
..End of games-we made right calls-right player had ball in his hand
..Not bothered by where we are in the polls ranked behind 4-5 loss teams
..There is great parity in basketball..that’s why Gonzaga-Dayton-SDSU are ranked
..Our guys hate losing-they were disappointed in losing..we hung a banner
..We are going to play in March and that is good
..I thought we would click at start of the season…going (30-2)..wow.

..Great experience for chance to go play at Madison Square Garden and play
..Do want to scrimmage on Saturday just to get guys to get into the flow
..My guys don’t like practicing against each other
..We have talked to our players about the virus-crisis
..Universithy health has given our players packets as information
..Fans and spectators are important to game of basketball-playing in empty arena be hard
..This bye week is great for us-rest our legs.

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“Aztecs”

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It’s the only team in town with a winning record, whether that is San Diego State football, which has gone (81-31) over the last 9-years, or this current Aztecs basketball team, heading to March Madness with a (30-2) record, heading into Selection Sunday

Incoming head coach Brady Hoke inherits a good program…and spring football ‘his way’ is in high gear.

Brady Hoke:

..Really good start into spring football…intenisty-energy-competition.
..New coaches and new players meshed well
..Very big senior class-good leadership-very important to me
..Young players need to understand how we want this team led
..Important week, installing our offense, changed language.
..Full scrimmage 76-plays on Saturday
..Carson Baker is leading QB right now..shown the most
..We will give other QBs a chance
..QB-Lucas Johnson-cannot comment on his transfer from Georgia Tech
..We may still take a look at another OL in recruiting end of spring
..RB competition is wide open-we ran decently-
..Run-Pass Option Offense of new Coordinator Jeff Hecklinski taking hold.
..RB-Jordan Byrd is good fit for RPO-too early to talk about other RBs in mix
..Use our playmakers a lot of different ways to help the QBs
..1-on-1 meetings with players have been good since I took over
..I am looking for leaders of this football team
..Replacing Ky Tezino-takes unique player-leader-athlete-physical talent
..We need seniors to lead..we won’t be very good if I have to lead
..I am animated about coaching-got in this to help kids
..Kick them in butt-kiss them on the cheek-you have to do that..we are a family

..You always take things you value from good and bad of my career..
..You look at things you should have done-didn’t do at Michigan-Oregon-Tennessee-do it now

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