Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, the entire sports world has shut down. For diehard sports fans like myself, this is a tragedy within itself. I find myself checking the ESPN app multiple times a day only to find no scores or highlights, constantly leaving me in disbelief that there really are no sports being played right now.
When the NBA season got cancelled, it hit me that the coronavirus really was as serious as everyone was saying it was. I never imagined a scenario that would cause a sports industry as big as the National Basketball Association to temporarily shut down. Now that it actually happened, life has been boring. It took me until today to realize how much myself and other basketball fans around the world enjoy the entertainment of the NBA. Today, I spent a good amount of my day just watching old basketball highlights on YouTube. I have become so accustomed to scrolling on Instagram and Twitter to watch countless in-game highlights, so it is so strange to me that the season really has been postponed.
Even worse than the NBA, MLB, PGA Tour Masters Tournament and all the other professional sports leagues’ postponements is the overall cancellation of the NCAA basketball tournament, otherwise known as March Madness. A March without madness is not a March at all. Spending hours making several brackets only to have all these brackets be completely destroyed within the first few games of the tournament is a feeling that all sports fans understand and will miss a lot this month. Not to mention, “The NCAA stands to lose nearly a billion dollars by cancelling March Madness,” according to newsweek.com. The tournament not happening this year may be justifiable, but nonetheless, nobody is benefitting from it. I would argue that March Madness is the best time of the year, so it is so sad to see the tournament not being played this year.
Not only are the fans mourning the cancellation of sports at this time, but the players are too. My heart goes out to the athletes who have worked so hard only to have their state tournaments, senior seasons and school-record breaking seasons taken away from them. This situation is no fun for anyone who loves sports, and all we can do is hope that it will be over soon.