Pitchin With Pritch: COVID-19 responsible for lots of ‘what-ifs’
Another week of stay at home and thinking about what would be going on if the Coronavirus had stayed out of the USA.
If it hadn’t happened, I would be getting ready for the National Championship NCAA Men’s Basketball finals. Actually, the final game would have been already played Monday night.
A lot of “what ifs” this season. I might have been able to use the tickets and maybe even see KU play the first round in Omaha. Don’t know that would have happened, but there would have been an excellent chance it would have happened.
Then a week of watching a lot of basketball games and seeing a lot of good players from across the nation, but it didn’t happen and I survived that part.
I did get to see a lot of reruns of games and most of them involved KU, like the 2008 championship between Oklahoma and KU played in Kansas City.
KU had lost 11 games that year and two of them were to Oklahoma. OU under Billy Tubbs was a run-and-gun team and KU wasn’t, but in this game KU chose to run with them.
The announcers were going nuts, saying KU can’t play OU’s style of basketball and win. The game was tied 50-50 at half. The announcers were still saying that KU can’t play that style and win.
KU slowed it down a little in the second half and in that game, we found OU couldn’t play that style and KU wins.
The hero for KU was Danny Manning, who was a pretty good player to say the least. He had 28 points, double digit rebounds and some blocks.
Larry Brown, who was the KU coach, won a national championship for the Jayhawks.
He left a couple of years later and also left KU on probation with the NCAA
The Jayhawks got Roy Williams for their next coach, so it was a keep-on-winning situation for them.
One good thing about watching the reruns is that if you know the score and your team loses, you don’t have to watch it.
It was fun to watch some of the other reruns and see some of the players that you had forgotten about as to where they went to college and watch them.
Still, it would have been better to watch a game live and in living color.
No football season either?
Last week I wrote about the loss of revenue that the NCAA had when they cancelled March Madness.
Now there is talk about the possibility of no college football season this fall or maybe, at best, an abbreviated season.
As I read different opinions on the subject, they run from no worry to no season. I know the Husker athletic program would suffer greatly if there were no Husker games next season.
President Trump thinks the NFL will be able to start on time with fans in stadiums by August and September. It has been suggested that college football could play in an empty stadium. Somewhere in there is an answer but who knows who has the correct answer at this time.
Ali Khan, dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s college of Public Health, told the Washington Post, “My crystal ball is not just cloudy, it’s black.”
Some disease experts suggest the possibility feared most and that is –NO major events for the rest of the year- and that may be more real than many believe.
When it is all said and done, the people in charge will have to consider a lot of data and opinions as they attempt to reach the most reasonable conclusion possible.
We will make it through all the disappointment, such as no prom, no track, no golf, no state meets.
It’s sad for the seniors at all the high schools. But if this is the worst thing that happens to this year’s seniors, they are still going to have pretty good lives. It’s just hard for them to believe that now, but it is true.