FREE: Ten Thoughts for Monday Morning

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.

6) Speaking of recruiting, Missouri landed one big fish and lost another in the last few days. East St. Louis quarterback Tyler Macon committed to Mizzou on Friday and then JK Johnson, a DB from DeSmet and the top-ranked player in Missouri, committed to Ohio State on Sunday. Obviously, very good news for Eli Drinkwitz on Macon. He's got his quarterback for this class. This will be the first player he brought in at the most important position on the field. It's his guy running his system. He was the top QB on the board for Missouri (within reason anyway, I believe) and Drinkwitz got him. I would think he becomes a guy who is expected to compete for the starting job by the 2022 season at the latest.

With Johnson, the news is less great obviously, but not surprising. Yes, Drinkwitz appears to be a good recruiter. But for the 8000th time, we need to get rid of the idea of "ace recruiters." Missouri doesn't beat Ohio State for many guys that Ohio State wants. It happens from time to time--and if it does happen, it's pretty much always a local kid--but not a lot. Recruiting is much more about the product that's being sold than it is about the guy selling it in most cases. It's why people should have been able to understand Barry Odom losing much of the Tiger Ten to places like Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio State and USC and it's why people should be able to understand Drinkwitz losing Johnson and some other high level players to similar programs. I'm not saying anyone has to like it, but it's reality. There's a food chain in recruiting. Missouri is solidly in the middle of that food chain--no matter who the coach is. The current guy might get a few more of the higher profile players than the last guy did, but Missouri's recruiting profile isn't drastically going to change. It is what it is and it will be what it always has been.

7) Spring football is effectively done.We saw three or four practices, I can't remember which. We didn't learn anything of substance. Like everything else, it's not officially cancelled, but there's no way we can expect it to happen. It will be interesting to see what happens in the summer. I'd guess the NCAA will grant extra practices to the teams that had spring ball cut short or, in some cases, completely eliminated. That kind of opens up another issue of housing everyone beginning in mid-July rather than early August, but the logistics of it all can probably be figured out. We can debate how important spring football is (I tend to think it's less important than most do) or how much competitive advantage teams that got 12 practices in had over teams that got three or none (I tend to think not much) but I would assume coaches are going to fight to be able to get back some of that lost time. It's probably pretty far down the ladder of how important things are, but it is going to be on the list. In addition, right now, this whole thing is an inconvenience for sports fans, but I think most get it. You want to see full blown madness in sports, think about what happens if this whole thing gets to the point where it's having an impact on football. That's when it would reach a whole new level of crazy.

8) I said at the beginning my job (and this site) largely aren't important. And I truly do believe that. But you guys pay for it and over the next few weeks, you're likely to be spending a lot more time at home and have a lot more down time, some of which is going to be spent on this site. So I'm taking a cue from a couple of my colleagues who have posed this question to their subscribers: In this time with no games and no practices to cover, what do YOU want to see us write about? If you have a suggestion, if you have an idea, post it here or email it to me at powermizzou@gmail.com. We'll take some of them, we won't take all of them. But we legitimately have no obligations or set things to cover right now. The next few weeks are a blank canvas. We're not going to just quit working. So if there's an idea you have (and understand, we're not going to be able to travel and we're not going to be able to do face to face interviews with people) that you'd like to see, let us know. We'll consider it.

9) Reading recommendations this week:

The Athletic: It's Bill Raftery's world and we're all lucky he makes us a part of it

Related, the Athletic is unlocking a favorite story or two from every one of its writers, so take a look over there to find some great writing

New York Times: Two women fell sick from the coronavirus. One survived

New Yorker: We are all irrational panic shoppers

Washington Post: How to flatten the curve

New Yorker: A photographer's parents wave farewell

10) I've thought a lot this week about how lucky I am and how many people aren't. I already work from home, so that's no major adjustment. I'm not rich, but I've got enough money saved up that we can stock up on a few things and prepare in case we're quarantined for a while. I believe I'll be able to go out and pick up a few things here and there if I need to. I like my family and spending time with them. This has been and is going to be an inconvenience, but in the end, that's probably all it's going to be for me and my family. But there are plenty of people for whom that won't be the case. I will not tell anyone how to feel about this pandemic or the reactions to it. I choose not to engage in making it a political discussion. The one thing that keeps going through my head personally is that we should all use this as a chance to think about other people and help out people who don't have things as easy as we do. There are children who don't get fed much or at all outside of school who aren't going to get those meals now. There are senior citizens who are in living situations where it's going to be harder for them to get the things they need to survive. There are business owners and employees of businesses who are going to fall on severely difficult financial times. So what I'm trying to think about, and what I would encourage you all to think about, is simply this: What can I do that might make it a little bit easier for some of those people? I think I'm going to put something on Twitter and Facebook today offering assistance to anyone in Columbia who needs help getting necessities to help them through the next few weeks. It's not a lot. It's not a grand gesture. It's just what I can do. If I have the time and the ability to help out some people that don't have that, why wouldn't I do it? Hopefully some of you can do the same thing. Whatever small thing you can do to help your fellow citizens, hopefully you'll try to do it. In difficult times, nobody makes it through thinking only of themselves. We all have some time in our lives where we need to rely on the kindness of others. Right now, if you're able to lend that kindness, do it. Maybe it will come back to you down the road at a time when you find you need it.