The Elephant in the Sports Room (Who should really be covering his trunk when he trumpets)

BY ADAM GREENE

As of Thursday night, pretty much all the sports world ground to a halt as the NBA, NHL and NCAA either cancelled or postponed their seasons in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic currently sweeping the globe.

It would do no good for me to go through the most recent news on the outbreak, because it’s changing by the minute and by the time I put the last period on the final sentence of this column, everything I would mention would likely be outdated.

There are obviously better news sources out there to stay informed. One of them isn’t Facebook, or really any social media, so be careful. Don’t let your toothless cousin who just got out of rehab for mixing meth and sizzurp convince you that the entire country of Italy has joined the Deep State to get Donald Trump voted out of office. Trump is doing a great job of that all by himself.

Which, frankly, is something you can still wager on if you’re so inclined.

While sports has taken a much-needed knee in the wake of a possible global apocalypse, there’s no reason to feel that every season will be affected. And, frankly, the actions we, albeit reluctantly, seem to be taking now are just the kind of thing that will allow Major League Baseball to eventually roll out the first pitch and the NFL and NCAA football to kick off in September.

The idea right now, as we socially isolate and hopefully your local school systems shut down for the next few weeks is to “flatten the curve.”

What that means is that we spread out an infection that, let’s be honest now, we’re all probably going to get or be exposed to, and keep it under a certain number of cases at a time so it doesn’t overwhelm our health care system. If we do that, sit upon our hoards of Nestle Pure Life and Charmin Ultra, we can ride this out and be watching Tom Brady take the field as a Tampa Bay Buccaneer come Fall without fear of anything other than a 43-year-old quarterback suffering a catastrophic knee injury that Sunday Night Football will show in slow motion replay 47 times in a row.

If we do this right, and a lot of that has to do with your local officials and public school systems, we can slide right through this and be fine. Yes, there will be no Final Four this year and probably no NBA or NHL champion.

BUT, there’s an excellent chance that your NCAA spring sports next year will be loaded to the gills with talent as the league is planning to give every player a redshirt. While your higher up MLB draft picks won’t return, there are plenty of elite college athletes that were never going to go pro (or had no avenue with which to do it) that will make for some stacked college baseball and softball teams.

There’s even talk about tossing in some extra eligibility for players in winter sports, that means we could have some insane super teams in college men’s and women’s basketball next year. Plenty of these men and women who end up in Europe after not making the NBA and WNBA cut could easily elect to stay in school and go after another title with an incoming group of talented freshmen.

Here’s the thing, though. If you want sports back, you need get behind everything that’s going on right now. You need to help flatten that curve. Don’t be the guy trying to keep your kid’s softball team rolling because your stepdaughter is hitting .295 that kicks off The Walking Dead. Let’s team up and save ourselves, save our most at risk groups and, by doing that, we can save our sports.

And if you want to place some bets, Adam Sandler winning the Razzie Redeemer Award looks like free money to me.