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I want to start by saying there are two things I realize: My job is not hard and my job is not all that important. In a world where we're hearing the phrase "essential personnel" multiple times every day, what we do here is about as non-essential as it gets. That said, it is my job, and in this space every week I post ten things that are on my mind every Monday morning. It generally is exclusively about sports and mostly about Mizzou sports. It's going to be a challenge to come up with ten thoughts on something that basically isn't happening right now. So I don't really know where this is going to go.
1) Nobody has ever experienced anything like what's going on in the sports world right now. The closest anyone could come is maybe the flu epidemic in 1918 but the truth is very few people who are alive now were alive then. Sports were interrupted to some extent for World War II, but they still happened. They paused for a day or a few days after things like the JFK assassination or 9/11, but there was a knowledge that they were coming back and that people were going to rally around them. In fact, the day sports resumed after 9/11 gave us what I believe to be the single most inspirational sporting moment I've ever witnessed
I still get chills watching it. Politics didn't matter. Sports mattered. Good God, did they matter. We wondered after 9/11 if we were ever going to care about sports again as much as we had, or if it was even going to be okay to admit we cared as much as we did. If anything, we probably cared more. And that was okay.
I want to be clear here, I'm not comparing what's going on right now to September 11th. It's a totally different thing. But in the days after September 11, we knew pretty quickly that games were coming back. We don't know that now. The NBA is talking about mid-June. If you assume that MLB can't really start practicing and getting back in shape until mid-May, you're probably looking at a similar start date for that. And those are the optimistic timelines. The Kentucky Derby's not going to happen I'm sure and pretty much everything else this spring has already been cancelled or postponed. Eventually, people are going to play games again and you're going to watch them and we're going to write about them and at some point that will feel normal again. But right now, we have no idea. And it's really strange for those of us for whom sports is such a central part of our lives. Again, I need to say, it's not really that important in the grand scheme of things. But it is something that everyone here has always had as a big part of their lives and now we don't. And we don't know when we will again.
2) As far as college sports go, I think we can just accept that the seasons are over. When the CDC said last night that it recommends not having more than 50 people in one place for the next eight weeks, that pretty much ended the baseball and softball seasons. They're not going to happen. The last Mizzou game was played on Wednesday, March 11, when baseball beat Western Illinois and softball lost to Illinois. Last year's volleyball season started with the Black and Gold game on August 16th. Realistically, that's the next Mizzou sporting event. We're talking about five months and five days. I can tell you I've never been to a black and gold volleyball game. If they have that one on schedule, we'll probably go, just to see what the first Mizzou game in five months is like.
3) Outside of sports, think about all the events and milestones that are going to be impacted. My son is supposed to graduate from college on May 23rd. I'm not at all sure he's going to have a ceremony. Think about all the weddings and funerals and graduations and all the other once in a lifetime ceremonies and events that suddenly aren't going to happen. It's overwhelming. No one is any more or less important than any other. It's just something I've thought a lot about in the last few days.
4) Let's talk about what is going to happen to all the players who had their seasons or careers cut short. I understand the instant reaction that everyone should get another year of eligibility. The NCAA Division I Council Coordination Committee said on Friday that it is recommending that all spring athletes get an extra year of eligibility. The DIII advisory committee said the same thing. I think that's fair.
But again, I think there are implications to that. If you give everyone another year, you've got to abolish scholarship limitations next year and I think you've really got to gradually decrease them back to normal levels over four or five years so that you minimize the impact on current high school kids. I used softball as an example for this over the weekend. D1 softball programs get 12 scholarships. Let's say a team was supposed to lose 3 of those scholarships after this season and had already promised those three to incoming players. Obviously, they're going to have 15 players on scholarship if everyone comes back. Now, if they're just giving the extra year to seniors, that's one thing. But the recommendation is for everyone. Freshmen are still freshmen, juniors are still juniors, redshirt years are still available. What they're basically saying is that they're recommending everyone who is currently in college now has six years to play four rather than five. And again, it makes sense. But what happens after next year? If you immediately go back to 12 scholarships, it basically means D1 softball programs don't need to offer scholarships the next year. You're taking an entire class of high school players (the 2021 class) and either eliminating or greatly reducing the number of available scholarships. You can't do that. There is no perfect solution, but I think the best thing is to eliminate scholarship restrictions for the 2020-21 school year and then have slightly higher than normal limits for three years after that. Depriving high school players the opportunity at a scholarship is no better than telling the current players they just lost a year of eligibility.
5) This is going to have far reaching implications in recruiting and I think it's really going to hurt high school kids for a couple of years. Recruiting is banned for a month. Nobody can sign an LOI for a month. There are basketball players who still have visits to take and won't be able to take them before the spring signing period. There are athletes in many other sports who have had official and unofficial visits cancelled and don't really know when they're going to be able to take them now. The recruiting calendar is going to be completely blown up this year, I think. I don't know what it's going to look like, but it's going to look completely different. And it's going to really put a lot more stress on kids and families who are starting to make college decisions. I speak personally on this one because my son is a junior in high school who is almost certainly going to swim somewhere in college. We're going to be less impacted than most because most of the schools he is looking at do not offer athletic scholarships, so it's a little bit different process than a lot of athletes, but even just regular kids and students who are trying to make a college decision in the coming months are going to be doing it with fewer chances to see these schools and less information than most people have had. It's one of a million smaller tentacles of this thing that is going to have a big impact on a lot of people.
I want to start by saying there are two things I realize: My job is not hard and my job is not all that important. In a world where we're hearing the phrase "essential personnel" multiple times every day, what we do here is about as non-essential as it gets. That said, it is my job, and in this space every week I post ten things that are on my mind every Monday morning. It generally is exclusively about sports and mostly about Mizzou sports. It's going to be a challenge to come up with ten thoughts on something that basically isn't happening right now. So I don't really know where this is going to go.
1) Nobody has ever experienced anything like what's going on in the sports world right now. The closest anyone could come is maybe the flu epidemic in 1918 but the truth is very few people who are alive now were alive then. Sports were interrupted to some extent for World War II, but they still happened. They paused for a day or a few days after things like the JFK assassination or 9/11, but there was a knowledge that they were coming back and that people were going to rally around them. In fact, the day sports resumed after 9/11 gave us what I believe to be the single most inspirational sporting moment I've ever witnessed
I still get chills watching it. Politics didn't matter. Sports mattered. Good God, did they matter. We wondered after 9/11 if we were ever going to care about sports again as much as we had, or if it was even going to be okay to admit we cared as much as we did. If anything, we probably cared more. And that was okay.
I want to be clear here, I'm not comparing what's going on right now to September 11th. It's a totally different thing. But in the days after September 11, we knew pretty quickly that games were coming back. We don't know that now. The NBA is talking about mid-June. If you assume that MLB can't really start practicing and getting back in shape until mid-May, you're probably looking at a similar start date for that. And those are the optimistic timelines. The Kentucky Derby's not going to happen I'm sure and pretty much everything else this spring has already been cancelled or postponed. Eventually, people are going to play games again and you're going to watch them and we're going to write about them and at some point that will feel normal again. But right now, we have no idea. And it's really strange for those of us for whom sports is such a central part of our lives. Again, I need to say, it's not really that important in the grand scheme of things. But it is something that everyone here has always had as a big part of their lives and now we don't. And we don't know when we will again.
2) As far as college sports go, I think we can just accept that the seasons are over. When the CDC said last night that it recommends not having more than 50 people in one place for the next eight weeks, that pretty much ended the baseball and softball seasons. They're not going to happen. The last Mizzou game was played on Wednesday, March 11, when baseball beat Western Illinois and softball lost to Illinois. Last year's volleyball season started with the Black and Gold game on August 16th. Realistically, that's the next Mizzou sporting event. We're talking about five months and five days. I can tell you I've never been to a black and gold volleyball game. If they have that one on schedule, we'll probably go, just to see what the first Mizzou game in five months is like.
3) Outside of sports, think about all the events and milestones that are going to be impacted. My son is supposed to graduate from college on May 23rd. I'm not at all sure he's going to have a ceremony. Think about all the weddings and funerals and graduations and all the other once in a lifetime ceremonies and events that suddenly aren't going to happen. It's overwhelming. No one is any more or less important than any other. It's just something I've thought a lot about in the last few days.
4) Let's talk about what is going to happen to all the players who had their seasons or careers cut short. I understand the instant reaction that everyone should get another year of eligibility. The NCAA Division I Council Coordination Committee said on Friday that it is recommending that all spring athletes get an extra year of eligibility. The DIII advisory committee said the same thing. I think that's fair.
But again, I think there are implications to that. If you give everyone another year, you've got to abolish scholarship limitations next year and I think you've really got to gradually decrease them back to normal levels over four or five years so that you minimize the impact on current high school kids. I used softball as an example for this over the weekend. D1 softball programs get 12 scholarships. Let's say a team was supposed to lose 3 of those scholarships after this season and had already promised those three to incoming players. Obviously, they're going to have 15 players on scholarship if everyone comes back. Now, if they're just giving the extra year to seniors, that's one thing. But the recommendation is for everyone. Freshmen are still freshmen, juniors are still juniors, redshirt years are still available. What they're basically saying is that they're recommending everyone who is currently in college now has six years to play four rather than five. And again, it makes sense. But what happens after next year? If you immediately go back to 12 scholarships, it basically means D1 softball programs don't need to offer scholarships the next year. You're taking an entire class of high school players (the 2021 class) and either eliminating or greatly reducing the number of available scholarships. You can't do that. There is no perfect solution, but I think the best thing is to eliminate scholarship restrictions for the 2020-21 school year and then have slightly higher than normal limits for three years after that. Depriving high school players the opportunity at a scholarship is no better than telling the current players they just lost a year of eligibility.
5) This is going to have far reaching implications in recruiting and I think it's really going to hurt high school kids for a couple of years. Recruiting is banned for a month. Nobody can sign an LOI for a month. There are basketball players who still have visits to take and won't be able to take them before the spring signing period. There are athletes in many other sports who have had official and unofficial visits cancelled and don't really know when they're going to be able to take them now. The recruiting calendar is going to be completely blown up this year, I think. I don't know what it's going to look like, but it's going to look completely different. And it's going to really put a lot more stress on kids and families who are starting to make college decisions. I speak personally on this one because my son is a junior in high school who is almost certainly going to swim somewhere in college. We're going to be less impacted than most because most of the schools he is looking at do not offer athletic scholarships, so it's a little bit different process than a lot of athletes, but even just regular kids and students who are trying to make a college decision in the coming months are going to be doing it with fewer chances to see these schools and less information than most people have had. It's one of a million smaller tentacles of this thing that is going to have a big impact on a lot of people.
