• About
  • Advertise
  • Careers
  • Write for us
  • Contact
  • Terms of service
Saturday, June 25, 2022
The Millennial Source
TMS
Home WORLD

March Madness canceled as NCAA Basketball confronts coronavirus outbreak

byJoseph Lyttleton
March 13, 2020
in WORLD
Source: CBS Sports

Source: CBS Sports

Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on Linkedin



On Thursday, March 12, one of America’s biggest sporting events, March Madness, was canceled. 

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) made this unprecedented decision in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has reached over 1,800 cases in the United States.

Before the NCAA officially canceled the basketball tournament, individual college conferences had decided to cancel their tournaments. With the March Madness games no longer being played, the potential financial fallout from the decision is likely to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The NCAA takes precautions

Source: Vox

On Thursday, the NCAA decided to cancel all sporting events for the year, including the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments collectively known as March Madness.

NCAA spokeswoman Meghan Durham gave the following statement: 

“Today, NCAA President Mark Emmert and the Board of Governors canceled the Division I men’s and women’s 2020 basketball tournaments, as well as all remaining winter and spring NCAA championships. This decision is based on the evolving COVID-19 public health threat, our ability to ensure the events do not contribute to spread of the pandemic, and the impracticality of hosting such events at any time during this academic year given ongoing decisions by other entities.”

Prior to canceling the tournament outright on Thursday, the NCAA had announced that it would bar fans from the games but allow the tournament to continue. It would have been the first time in the tournament’s history that the games were played without crowds.

The annual college basketball tournament is held over three weekends in late March and early April. It involves 68 teams from Division 1 (D1) colleges around the country. After an initial round to eliminate four teams, the 64 remaining teams play a single-elimination tournament in a seeded, four-region bracket.

The first games were set to begin on Tuesday, March 17, with the championship game being played on Monday, April 6 in Atlanta, Georgia. The seeds for the bracket are announced on Selection Sunday, which would have been March 15 this year.

In the week prior to the beginning of the NCAA tournament, college conferences play their own tournaments. There are 32 Division 1 conferences, and the winner of each tournament gets an automatic bid to the national tournament.

However, this year, many of the conference tournaments were canceled due to COVID-19. After the conference tournaments were called off, there were those who called for the NCAA tournament to also be canceled.

On the professional side of the sport, the National Basketball Association announced on Wednesday that it was suspending its season after a player was found to have the coronavirus. The player was Rudy Gobert, a center for the Utah Jazz.

The history of March Madness

The NCAA began holding the men’s basketball tournament in 1939, with the Oregon Ducks winning the first national title. The tournament didn’t start with 64 teams. In fact, the tournament only involved the top eight teams until 1951, when it expanded to 16. It expanded to a 64-team tournament in 1985. In 2001, one more team was added, and then three more in 2011.

The name “March Madness” is trademarked by the NCAA, but its roots go back to a man named Henry Porter. He coined the term back in 1939, as a high school official in Illinois. However, the first person to use the famous term for the NCAA tournament was Brent Musburger in 1982, who has been a sports announcer for decades.

A multimillion dollar event

Source: Testudo

The March Madness Tournament is a multimillion dollar event broadcast around the world.

While the NCAA oversees all collegiate sports, the basketball tournament is its biggest earner. In the 2016-17 school year, the NCAA collected US$1 billion in revenue, with 75% of that being made from March Madness alone. With increasing ad revenue, the tournament was expected to make nearly a billion dollars this year.

CBS has exclusive rights to air the tournament games, having signed a deal in 2010 worth US$10.8 billion to air the games until 2024. That deal was extended until 2032 for another US$8.8 billion in 2016.

The 2019 championship game between Virginia and Texas Tech had 19.6 million viewers in the United States, with 100 million people watching the tournament around the world.

College athletes don’t get paid

While the student athletes will miss out on the opportunity to play on one of the world’s biggest stages for sports, they don’t normally get paid for doing so.

This is due to an older rule barring college athletes from being paid to play sports for their universities, even as the schools bring in millions of dollars from the activities. California was the first state to vote to allow student athletes to be paid for their effort. The NCAA has also added a new rule to allow the athletes “to benefit from their name, image and likeness.”

However, critics of the rule say it won’t actually benefit the athletes much and what they will earn will pale in comparison to what the NCAA and universities earn each year.

[article_ad]

Related

Tags: North AmericaShort read
ShareTweetShare

Latest Posts

Juul banned

The US orders Juul vapes off the market. Here’s what you need to know

June 24, 2022
US gun legislation

US Senate agrees to fast-track new gun law

June 23, 2022
January 6 hearings

The fourth day of the January 6 hearings show Trump’s pressure campaign on election officials

June 22, 2022

Senator Ron Wyden proposes a tax increase on price-gouging oil companies

June 15, 2022

US House of Representatives holds primetime TV hearings on the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Here’s what you need to know

June 13, 2022

Biden to travel to Saudi Arabia this month to alleviate oil prices as OPEC+ increases production

June 3, 2022

Texas shooting: 21 people confirmed dead; Biden says he’s “sick and tired” of US gun violence

May 26, 2022

The US SEC investigates Wall Street over use of unapproved messaging apps

May 19, 2022

There is a “very, very high risk” of a US recession, says Goldman Sachs Chairman Lloyd Blankfein

May 17, 2022

SUBSCRIBE TO THE TMS NEWSLETTER

By providing your email, you agree to our Privacy Policy

The Millennial Source Ltd. 2021

No Result
View All Result
  • Your daily briefing
  • About us
  • Explore
    • Startups
    • Climate change
    • Tech giants
    • Crypto
    • The future of work
    • Banking giants
    • Economy
  • Lifestyle
  • Human stories
  • TMS archives
  • Write for us
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy & Terms

2022 The Millennial Source Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Add New Playlist

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings.

 

Loading Comments...
 

    string(24) "jsonld single post debug"
    The Millennial Source
    Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

    Strictly Necessary Cookies

    Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

    If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.