Mizzou, NCAA competitions canceled due to coronavirus concerns
NASHVILLE — When Missouri athletics director Jim Sterk arrived in Nashville Tuesday night, his focus was on the basketball court. A few concerns had been floated about holding the SEC men's basketball tournament amidst the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, but Tuesday afternoon, the SEC released a statement saying it would proceed with its conference tournament, spectators and all. Games were played Wednesday night with fans in attendance.
By 9 a.m. Thursday morning, Sterk found himself in a meeting with other conference athletics directors and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey. The group decided to not only cancel the final four days of the men's basketball tournament, but to call off all sporting events until at least March 30.
"When we came here we were focused on trying to win the tournament, and now it's dealing with a lot of issues that we weren't expecting," Sterk told reporters a group of reporters gathered in Missouri's team hotel. "We weren't expecting the tournament to be canceled, we weren't expecting spring sports to be suspended, but it seemed prudent in the light of what was going on on our campuses and and across the nation to make those decisions."
Each of the other Division I conferences around the country had reached a similar decision by noon Thursday. A few hours later, the NCAA released a statement canceling all winter and spring sports championships, meaning college athletic competitions are essentially finished until next fall.
The statement read: "This decision is based on the evolving COVID-19 public health threat, our ability to assure that our events do not contribute to the spread of the pandemic, and the impracticality of hosting such events at any time during this academic year, given ongoing decisions by other entities."
Like the NCAA, the SEC initially announced on Wednesday it would proceed with basketball tournament games with only family members, media and staff in attendance. Sankey said the league's decision to take precautions a step forward stemmed from the NBA's suspension of its regular season, which was precipitated by Utah Jazz forward Rudy Gobert testing positive for coronavirus, precipitated further change.
"I think our student-athletes in men's basketball saw what happened in the NBA, and they look to that, many of them, as the next step in our basketball opportunity, and it just creates questions," Sankey said. "So this was the appropriate decision made at the best possible time, even though a difficult time."
The Missouri men's basketball team finished its season with a 15-16 record. The 10th-seeded Tigers were slated to play seventh-seeded Texas A&M at 6 p.m. on Thursday. Sterk said he quickly relayed the conference's decision to cancel the tournament to head coach Cuonzo Martin so he could inform the team before the news went public. Martin was not available for comment Thursday, but Sterk characterized him as "disappointed." Two days prior, Martin told reporters that he would be at peace with any decision made by the conference.
“This is life stuff," he said. "This sport is secondary when you’re talking life stuff. ... It's just a game. There’s life and there’s sport. It’s real simple. If they shut it down, shut it down. Keep moving.”
The Missouri swimming and diving, wrestling, gymnastics, track and field (both indoor and outdoor), men's and women's golf, baseball and softball teams also had their seasons abruptly ended by the NCAA's announcement. Sterk said the Tiger baseball team was in a Chicago airport, en route to its first SEC series of the season, at Alabama, when the conference canceled all sporting events. Members of the men's and women's track and field teams had already arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico for the NCAA championship meet, scheduled for this weekend.
Sterk did not know yet if the postseason bans handed down to the Missouri baseball and softball teams by the NCAA would roll over to next season now that the postseasons have been called off.
"You know how I feel about that," Sterk said. "There's no way they should (roll over)."
Even though Missouri canceled classes for the remainder of this week and will not hold any in-person classes until students return from spring break on March 23, at the earliest, Sterk is still allowing sports teams to continue practicing. That includes spring football. Sterk said he had preliminary discussions with new head coach Eliah Drinkwitz about modifying the Black and Gold game, scheduled for April 11, but nothing had yet been decided.
"We had talked before we left about maybe a limited access spring game, and with a stadium that size you can separate people and not have them around our players," Sterk said. "Practices are continuing as we speak."
Like seemingly everyone in the college sports realm, Sterk struggled to find a historical comparison for the events of the past few days. The closest parallel he drew was the terrorist attacks made on the United States on September 11, 2001, purely from a cancelation standpoint.
"It reminded me of 9/11, when I was at Washington State, and first people were gonna play football games and then they were canceled. It kind of felt like that, where things are out of your control and you really aren't prepared for something like this. ... They don't teach you that in AD school."
Sankey, too, stressed that college athletics leadership Is In uncharted waters. He cautioned that the situation might become more murky before answers arise.
"I don't have all of the answers," he said. "I told my staff I don't know is a perfectly good answer from time to time. It can't just be I don't know. You're going to have to do the work to engage and learn how to answer the question eventually. So we've created an interim period where we will work with our campuses to determine how we return to our normal operation. It may not be March 30. It may be beyond. But that remains to be seen."
