Weekly Update – Week of March 16, 2020 (COVID Week 1)

Baseball – MLB: Play suspended

Basketball – NBA: Season suspended indefinitely. 3 players with COVID19. Looking at a mid-June return date

Football: Dak and Derrick tagged. XFL canceled.

Golf: PGA Tour canceled up until Masters. Masters postponed.

Hockey: NHL season suspended

Olympic Sports: NCAA cancels all championships in Winter & Spring. Olympics still on schedule (so far).

Soccer: Some games on TV! MLS and Premier League suspended.

As we enter this time of panic, keep things in perspective. Be a kind person and follow the rules – this is only temporary. And best case scenario, we look back at this later with an eye roll. And up those subscriptions!

Baseball – MLB:

• MLB has suspended their regular season by 2 weeks (so far). And now a minor league Yankee players has tested positive.

Basketball – NBA:

• NBA is realistically looking at a return to the season in mid-June with no spectators. But all of this is up in the air at this point.
• ICYMI: Jazz Center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus along with Donovan Mitchell. A Pitons player has also tested positive. All are doing fine and are currently in isolation.
  • Rudy has donated $500k to relief in Utah, Oklahoma (where he was about to play when the test came back positive) and his homeland of France. This was after he jokingly touched all the media recorders during a press conference before he knew he had it.

Basketball – NCAAM:

• March madness has been canceled. Not postponed canceled! Along with every other winter and spring national championships.

Football:

• Follow up on the story from last week: the Cowboys have put an executive tag on QB Dak Prescott, after a new deal could not be reached in time. This now gives both parties until June 15^th to work on a long-term deal. As a reminder, an exclusive tag means that Dak is not allowed to talk with other teams. The last rumored deal discussed was $33MM/yr offer with $100MM guaranteed.
• The Titans have placed a franchise tag on RB Derrick Henry. The team also resigned QB Ryan Tannehill for $118MM for 4 years allowing them to use their one tag on Henry instead.
• QB Kirk Cousins has agreed to a 2-year extension with the Vikings for $66MM.
• The XFL season has been canceled.
• The NFL will proceed with the draft as normal (well minus spectators). The draft will be held in Las Vegas April 23-25.

Golf:

• The PGA Tour announced on Thursday morning that there would be no spectators for the remaining days of the PLAYERS championship along with its next month of tournaments up until the Masters (tournaments effected: Valspar, Dell Match Play and Valero TX Open). It also canceled the Puntacana (DR) tournament. However, after day 1 concluded the PGA Tour met to discuss their options as every other league canceled and suspended play. Ultimately, they decided to do the same. The Valspar, Dell Match Play and Valero TX Open have all been canceled.

• Golf’s biggest day, the Masters, has been postponed. This announcement came just hours after the PGA Tour canceled tournaments. The Masters is run privately, not run by the PGA so it was not the league’s call to cancel or postpone that tournament. No news yet on potential timing.

Hockey:

• The NHL has suspended their season until further notice.

Olympic Sports:

• The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are still on schedule for July 24^th as of an announcement by the IOC this morning. Many many people are looking to the Olympics to see their next move. Their attitude is that they have some time as the event doesn’t start until the end of July.
• NCAA canceled all remaining winter championships and spring championships. The picture above is the list of NCAAs effected. Please take a moment to think of the athletes that trained for this for a year (if not their lifetimes) and are now not allowed to play. My heart breaks for you and we are all thinking of them in this time.
  • Obviously due to personal bias, I want to specifically mention the NCAA Indoor Track & Field athletes as I was one of them and they were already on site for their championships. Please feel free to reach out to me for an encouraging word or to tell me the story of your season! It was an honor to compete at that level all those years ago and I cannot imagine having that ripped away from you, especially as you were already training/warming up at the facility.
• The NCAA has announced that it is considering another year of eligibility for those seniors who lost their final season. In my opinion this is fitting, an unprecedented solution for an unprecedented situation. No final news yet on this topic.
• Olympic torch relay was canceled after it was originally supposed to take place with no spectators. Why? Because people showed up anyway – so in an effort to keep people home, the torch has stopped.
• Boston marathon has been postponed until Sept 14^th. The London Marathon is also postponed until Oct 4^th.
• For a full list of canceled events, please check twitter and ESPN. If there are sports still going on, please reach out to let me know!

• Caster Semenya will now try to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics in the 200m after being banned from running the 800 without the use of testosterone reducing treatments.
• One sporting event that did actually take place – the Paris-Nice cycling race on Saturday and German Maximillan Schachmann won. The race was shortened by 1 day and instead finished on Saturday instead of the traditional last stage in Nice. Schachmann is the 1^st German to win this race since 2011.

Soccer:

• The MLS and EPL have postponed their seasons as well.

What to watch this week

Nothing…. We are sport-less for a month most likely.

Golf:

• The Golf Channel is showing replays of the previous year’s tournaments during their respective weeks.
• Mon 3/16 – replay of the final round of 2019 PLAYERS @ 6am on Golf Channel
• Tues 3/17 – replay of Round 3 of 2019 Valspar @ 6am on Golf Channel
• Wed 3/18 – replay of Final Round of 2019 Valspar @ 6am on Golf Channel
• Thurs 3/19 – replay of Round 1 of 2018 Valspar @ 6am on Golf Channel
• Fri 3/20 – replay of Round 2 of 2018 Valspar @ 6am on Golf Channel
• Sat 3/21 – replay of Round 3 of 2018 Valspar @ 6am on Golf Channel
• Sun 3/22 – replay of Final Round of 2018 Valspar @ 6am on Golf Channel

Soccer:

• There are still some countries with soccer games going on but so far none televised here in the USA.
  • Australian A-League is on ESPN + on Sat 3/21 at 3:30am and 5:45am
  • Costa Rican Primera Division has one game on ESPN Desportes @ 3pm on Sun 3/22