Economic impact just of sports

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Another week in which may be the strangest year I have ever seen.
You get used to expecting certain things to be going on at certain times of the year.

Every now and then you get a cancellation due to some unforeseen circumstance. 

But the virus situation is way ahead of whatever else has happened in my life.

As a teacher and coach, you always knew there might be snowstorm or something that would cause a change, but you always had the knowledge that in a few days, in most cases, things would be back to normal.

At times, the past couple of weeks I have almost forgot what normal would look like if it ever returns. There are way more serious problems confronting people today than just not being able to go to or watch on TV sporting events. 

But not having these events will take money out of the pocket of working people and the cancellation of events could very well have an effect on college programs across the nation. 

There were a number of articles the past few days about the effect cancellation or late starts of some professional sports might have down the line in the years to come.

March madness for example

First of all, the NCAA March Madness cancellation hits colleges and universities in the pocketbook. I found some numbers in the articles and then you get an idea of how important the programs are to schools of the NCAA.

• The NCAA’s annual distribution to Division 1 schools will be in the neighborhood of $225 million. Granted that is a nice neighborhood but that is down from an expected $600 million.

• Of the $225 million, $53.6 million will be split equally among the 32 conferences and teams “that meet athletic and academic standards to play in the men’s basketball tournament.” The remaining money apparently will be split up based on factors not made public. (NCAA Secret Files)

• The NCAA did recoup $270 million thanks to an emergency insurance policy and will then have to dip into $50 million of its reserve accounts.

A lot of fans probably are not going to give a hoot about the financials because they just wanted to be able to watch their favorite team in action. But the numbers help illustrate just how monumental a decision it was and how hard it must have been to arrive at the fact that their only option was to cancel the tournament.

For people who somehow don’t want to take this action seriously: organizations don’t typically leave $375 million on the table unless they absolutely have to. A lot of programs and conferences are going to be feeling the impact from the cancellation for a long time.

I also found an article questioning if there would be a college football season this coming fall. I wanted to do some more looking there so that might be a column for another day. 

 

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