SAN DIEGO — The body of college basketball, buried half-alive by COVID in March, was exhumed last week.
It has begun its new life in semi-earnest. It may end as it did in 2020, with a viral thud, again on the medical examiner's table.
Those in sports have done their best to dribble around this damn thing, to block and tackle it, to launch angle and exit-velo it with about as much success as can or could be expected.
But like everything else, we are rushing into it, desperate to get games made as money pours without a handy tourniquet from sports bodies, college and pro.
This virus isn't an unruly child you simply can ground for a week without a smartphone.
Until there's a vaccine we know works — and it appears to be coming soon — the sports world is a huge casino, one crap table after the other.
We have been impatient with it and quite often incredibly stupid and uncaring. The virus has no feelings or sense of hearing.
At this point in COVID Time, I agree with Rick Pitino. Not for his sexual appetite in Italian restaurants, but how he sees the season.
Now basketball coach at Iona, Rick has looked at it closely and would like it further away.
"Move the start back," one of the all-time coaches tweeted last week. "Play league schedule and have May Madness. Spiking and protocols make it impossible to play right now."
Pitino's team already has had a two-week shutdown because of COVID-19, and others have followed. His Gaels' first four games already have been postponed or canceled.
I would love to see the season played out. I think there's a much better chance of it happening if the pause button is pushed and it doesn't become the mess its football partner has become — and most football is played outdoors.
Face it, a whole lot of people pay little or no attention to college basketball until brackets are filled out, anyway.
As it is, the NCAA seriously is thinking of having its Tournament in one big bubble, similar to what the NBA did in Orlando, when it escaped without a case of COVID. It can be done, perhaps in a place such as Indianapolis, which will house the (we hope) Final Four, anyway.
But why must the Tournament begin in March? Just because it has? Because March Madness sounds cooler than May Madness (or May Maybe?)?
The 2021 Final Four might be April Fools.
The Mountain West schedule is scheduled to run four weeks shorter than normal. San Diego State's scheduled Dec. 3 and 5 series at Colorado State at the very least is postponed, possibly canceled. Kentucky will travel same-day.
College football games constantly are being canceled, delayed or fabricated on short notice (see San Diego State at Colorado). Nineteen Saturday college games were dumped.
Am I the only one who believes maybe collegiate football shouldn't have been tried at all?
Shortened seasons obviously create less interest, as ratings in all sports suggest, even though millions are spending more time at home. Why? Because it's just not the same.
Baseball's 60-game schedule mostly was dull and dominated by ridiculous analytics.
I still think, if the NFL (note the virus has moved Ravens-Steelers from Thanksgiving to Tuesday) wants playoffs, it will need a bubble, and L.A., which should be the permanent home of the Summer Olympics, is the ideal place for it. Three huge football stadiums, plenty of places to stay.
Even with that, it would be difficult.
College basketball season already has been chopped into hash. It should sit on the back burner to get whole again.
COVID doesn't listen to reason. Certainly not the unreasonable.
