GREENSBORO, N.C. _ The infamous black curtain was furled Tuesday night, tucked up at the ceiling instead of blocking off the upper deck, an unprecedented development in the short history of ACC tournament games played on Tuesday. The Greensboro Coliseum stands were two-thirds full of fans, the vast majority of them in light blue.
And none of them should have been in the building.
The ACC's decision to proceed with the tournament as planned Tuesday was certainly defensible in the lack of a mandate from Governor Roy Cooper or state public-health officials, but the smarter move would have been to be a leader rather than a follower and close the doors to fans.
That's what is happening at the MAC tournament in Cleveland, at the behest of Ohio's governor. They'll determine a champion with the crowd limited to credentialed attendees _ operations staff, media, school officials _ and team traveling parties. The Big West will do the same in Long Beach, Calif.
(The Ivy League, with its typical utter lack of common sense and innate self-sabotage when it comes to athletics, canceled its tournament entirely instead of playing it behind closed doors.)
But with the First Four in Dayton and a first-weekend site in Cleveland, the NCAA Tournament is inexorably headed that direction as well. Turner Broadcasting executives Tuesday morning acknowledged they could broadcast the Final Four from somewhere other than Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and Georgia Tech's newly renovated McCamish Pavilion makes all the sense in the world for a scaled-down crowd limited to families and bands and cheerleaders.
The NBA and NHL have held off as long as they can, but the San Jose Sharks face the very real possibility of playing home games in an empty arena and they almost certainly will not be the last.
No one wants this, the people who sold all the tickets even less than the people who bought them, but with the United States at what may be an inflection point with regard to the spread of the virus, large public gatherings like sporting events just aren't worth it. Especially with the travel inherent in postseason basketball.
All the dominoes are falling. Everything is leaning that way. And it's the smart thing to do.
"After consultation with local and state health authorities, including the Governor and his medical staff, the Atlantic Coast Conference will hold its men's basketball tournament as scheduled this week at the Greensboro Coliseum," the ACC said in a prepared statement. "As was outlined by the Governor during his press conference, high-risk individuals are discouraged from attending mass gatherings."
Keeping the media out of locker rooms _ for some reason, the first instinct of every league, pro and college _ is a symbolic but largely pointless gesture from an epidemiological perspective. The real danger of spreading the novel coronavirus isn't interactions between dozens of players and dozens of reporters; it's 20,000 people sitting inches from each other for four hours. By the end of the weekend, tens of thousands of people will have shared the air in the Greensboro Coliseum, sneezing on each other, touching the same surfaces, then dispersing across the east coast.
All it takes is one untested, undiagnosed person with COVID-19. One becomes many. Many become thousands. Even if healthy people are largely unaffected by the disease itself, they can spread it to those at risk. And if that healthy person then suffers some other illness, they may find the hospital bed or ventilator they need already taken as the health system is overwhelmed.
Our hospitals aren't full now, but they so easily could be if this spreads. That's what happened in northern Italy, a country now essentially shut down by the virus.
Playing basketball games in empty arenas may seem like an overreaction, and maybe it is, but really, what's the harm?
Better too safe than very sorry.
In most years, there's no problem keeping fans out of the building on Tuesday. The teams playing usually do a pretty good job of that themselves. North Carolina's inaugural appearance led to a very atypical atmosphere, Thursday's crowd two days early.
If things get worse in the region, the ACC may have no choice but to lock the doors. The health crisis is moving so quickly, changing so fast, that what's true at lunch may no longer be true by dinner. But that's only another reason to be proactive instead of reactive.
It's just basketball. It's not life or death. Even in North Carolina.
