The association’s initial response to the crisis called for tournament games to be played without fans in the arenas. Then college sports officials decided to shut down the tournament games. ATLANTA — The coronavirus pandemic shattered college sports on Thursday, as the N. C.
A. A. canceled its showcase men’s and women’s basketball tournaments and conferences across the country abandoned plans for games in the months ahead. The decisions, just one day after the N.
C. A. A. said it intended to hold its Division I tournaments and other championship events without spectators, set off one of the greatest disruptions in the history of college athletics and threatened to exact a significant financial toll — easily hundreds of millions of dollars.
The most visible, immediate consequences of the decision concern the men’s and women’s national basketball tournaments, which were to be played in dozens of cities beginning next week. But after executives spent weeks trying to preserve the competitions, they ultimately deemed the games too great a public health peril. “This decision is based on the evolving Covid-19 public health threat, our ability to ensure the events do not contribute to spread of the pandemic, and the impracticality of hosting such events at any time during this academic year given ongoing decisions by other entities,” the N. C.
A. A. said in a statement that referred to the illness caused by the virus. The decision affects championships in all winter and spring sports, including baseball, gymnastics, ice hockey, lacrosse, softball, tennis and track.
Some of the championship events were set for well into June. The cancellations capped a chaotic day in college athletics as one league after another grappled with a fast-moving crisis ahead of the national basketball tournaments, which were scheduled to begin next week. Some faced pressure from state and local governments, many of which had imposed new restrictions on public gatherings, and from student-athletes themselves. Conference commissioners and university officials huddled behind closed doors to assess the situation, especially in light of the N.
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B. A. ’s decision on Wednesday night to suspend its season. Teams traveled to largely empty arenas for conference tournaments, and some had even begun playing — only to be sent home, stripped of their championship ambitions and often unsure of when they might return to class.
“This has been the most extraordinary stretch of games I’ve ever had or ever seen in my 30-plus years of working in the sports business,” said Val Ackerman, the commissioner of the Big East, which began a tournament game on Thursday but aborted it during halftime as New York’s governor was preparing to announce new limits for public events in the state. “The developments seem to be changing by the hour. ” Get an informed guide to the global outbreak with our daily coronavirus
newsletter.
In Indianapolis, where the Big Ten opened its men’s tournament on Wednesday, Brandon Johns Jr.
, a sophomore at Michigan, led the Wolverines into a largely empty Bankers Life Fieldhouse and jokingly acknowledged the crowd that was not there. Moments later, the players from Michigan and its opponent, Rutgers, were ushered off the floor, their game and the rest of the tournament canceled. “I don’t want to have any regrets,” Kevin Warren, the Big Ten commissioner, said afterward. “I want to make sure as a conference we do the right things because if something had gone awry here, I don’t want to be in a position looking back saying, ‘If only we would have canceled this tournament.
’” In an interview on Thursday afternoon, Greg Sankey, the Southeastern Conference commissioner, expressed a similar perspective after canceling the league’s championship events: “We viewed stopping now, given the information, as being the proactive step. ” Someday, he said, he hoped the decision would be judged a well-intentioned overreaction. The sudden ends of the conference basketball competitions — from the mighty Atlantic Coast Conference, home to many of the men’s national champions over the last decade, to smaller leagues like the Southland and the Sun Belt — made the cancellations of the national tournaments only a matter of time. The eventual outcome became even clearer as some of the national basketball powers, like Duke and Kansas, signaled that they would not travel for any athletic events.
The N. C. A. A.
’s sweeping cancellations came as a surprise to many people, even those who had believed the basketball tournaments were all but certain to be called off. For a few hours on Wednesday, some sports executives believed that the basketball tournaments would go on in sparsely populated arenas from Sacramento to Atlanta, which was scheduled to host the men’s Final Four in April. Mark Emmert, the N.
“C.”
A. A. ’s president, said in an interview on Wednesday evening that he was “very confident that we’re at the right place,” even as he declined to rule out the possibility of cancellation. Then came the N.
B. A. ’s move, which college sports officials said had far-reaching ripples because it alarmed players who looked to the professional league as something of a guidepost. As Thursday wore on, the grim realities of cancellations set in among basketball coaches and players.
Coach Greg McDermott of Creighton, whose game ended at halftime when the Big East men’s tournament was canceled, said the N. B. A. ’s move had “fast-tracked everything and set all this into motion.
” “I understand it,” McDermott said. “The safety of our fans, of our student-athletes, has to become paramount, and I’m sure that’s why this decision was made. ” Whether the N. C.
A. A. , or the media companies that were scheduled to televise the basketball tournaments, will absorb a big financial hit from the cancellation remains to be seen. Certain insurance policies could reduce the losses.
The N. C. A. A.
earned over $1. 1 billion in revenue the last fiscal year, almost 80 percent of it from the television and marketing rights for the Division I men’s tournament. The association’s contracts with CBS and Turner Sports to televise the tournament almost assuredly have provisions for how to handle a loss of games, said Chris Bevilacqua, a sports media rights consultant who has advised a number of teams and leagues on their media rights agreements. The contents of these clauses, which detail how to handle unforeseen events, can vary.
Sometimes they consist of simple mathematical formulas that spell out reductions, while other times they involve “tolling” provisions that automatically add time to the end of previously negotiated contracts. “They are very customary, but I wouldn’t describe it as a cookie-cutter one size fits all,” said Bevilacqua, who was not familiar with the N. C. A.
A. ’s specific agreements. Before the full cancellation of the national tournaments, Emmert said the N. C.
A. A. had already accepted that it would miss out on tens of millions of dollars in ticket revenues because of its decision to bar fans. And with calculations of the costs still to come, a sense of sadness swept through college sports on Thursday.
“This is a difficult time with so many conflicting emotions,” said Dawn Staley, the women’s basketball coach at South Carolina, whose team is ranked No. 1 in the country. “First and foremost, we have to recognize how important it is to do the right thing for our community. Sports is a big part of our lives, but just one part of how we are connected to each other.
We need to step back and think about the larger good served by canceling events that put people at risk. ” She and others were particularly regretful that some athletes would not play another college game. “For our seniors and the others throughout the country, who will not have the chance to finish their careers the way they expected to, that’s a tougher, more emotional thing to process,” Staley said. “Again, we have to lean on that this is the right thing for everyone’s health and safety.
” Reporting was contributed by Jeff Arnold from Indianapolis, Kevin Draper and Ben Shpigel from New York and Billy Witz from Las Vegas.
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