How I feel about March Madness, five years after COVID canceled the tournament
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My brother called me five years ago in a sullen mood. He’d just learned the NCAA canceled March Madness, because of the COVID pandemic digging its claws into our nation.
We both felt pretty glum. March Madness ranks as our favorite sporting event. How do you not love this tournament that blends Cinderellas and blue bloods and reminds us that, in sports, anything can happen once?
An NCAA official announced that it was with “disappointment” and “heartbreak” that the association canceled March Madness, and it was with disappointment and heartbreak that I received the news.
The NCAA Tournament, MLB opening day and the Masters form an unmatchable trifecta throughout a stretch of the sports calendar that ranks as my favorite.
COVID canceled or delayed each of those events, five years ago.
I remember pulling up to a sports bar in Knoxville, Tennessee, on March 19, 2020. That’s the day March Madness would have tipped off, if a deadly disease for which our country was ill-prepared had not interfered. The bar’s doors were locked, its lights off, the business closed. In normal times, it would be filled with basketball fans sinking beers, eating greasy bar food and cheering on their upset picks. Those weren’t normal times.
I wrote the following in the lede of my story for the Knoxville News Sentinel:
The flags of the 14 SEC schools flapped in the breeze on the evening of March 19 above Fieldhouse Social on what, under normal circumstances, would have been the first day of the NCAA Tournament’s first round.
Perhaps the flags should have been flying at half-mast.
Instead of pouring beers for hoops fans that day, Fieldhouse Social closed the doors indefinitely to its popular sports bar on University Commons Way.
A day later, all Knoxville bars and restaurants were ordered closed to dine-in customers amid social distancing efforts as America battles the coronavirus pandemic.
I spoke with Fieldhouse Social’s manager, Rodney Lee, for that story. His quote spoke to the heart of the situation: “We’re right on the edge of campus, and you have a university with no students, and a sports bar with no sports,” he told me.
I also phoned Paul Finebaum around that time. Finebaum’s daily talk show on the SEC Network, during which callers typically phone in to banter about games or uncork heated opinions, turned almost therapeutic during those early days of the pandemic, while Finebaum’s audience came to grips with a changing world.
Finebaum, as he has a knack for doing, so perfectly put into words what so many were feeling.
“I am worried about sports fans from a psychological standpoint,” Finebaum told me that March, “because a lot of sports fans really do need this fuel. It fulfills their life.
“I think we’re in a level of almost psychological disorientation.”
Sports wield the power to bring us together, but, during 2020, we were told to stay apart from one another. As real-world problems mounted, sports no longer provided us joyful distraction.
I remember feeling almost gleeful in May, when Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning teamed up to face Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady in a televised charity golf match, one of the first sporting events amid the pandemic. Normally, I wouldn’t watch exhibition golf, but, in those bleak times, watching that golf match felt like a long drink of something good.
And, yes, I had a drink — or two or three — while watching that match during a furlough from work.
As we arrive at this five-year anniversary of COVID, I write this knowing the cancellation of a basketball tournament paled in comparison to the pandemic’s other more drastic, harrowing, life-changing and life-ending outcomes.
And still, I’m thankful we have basketball, and when the tournament tips Thursday, I can sit down at a bar, order a beer, watch the games within 6 feet of the fella next to me, and mourn the busting of my bracket.
I’m thankful to have back our bracket pools that bring together basketball diehards and casuals, fans young and old, man and woman, Republican and Democrat.
Because, I remember the March when we didn’t have this tournament, and that’s a March I never want to repeat.
Blake Toppmeyer is the Paste BN Network's national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
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