I’m going to try and offer some thoughts about Baylor sports and life each day while the world battles coronavirus.

I’ll touch on quite a few different topics, and like most of our lives right now, the structure will be pretty loose. If anyone has anything they want me to address, let me know here or on Twitter.

Coronavirus:

There are plenty of places with folks far more qualified than me to opine on the trajectory of the pandemic.

Life is very weird right now. When I see my parents—they’re both in their 60’s—they stay in the car and 15 feet away. I’ve tried to stay in contact with a group of folks (usually via text, I’m not real big on video calls from anything) to make social distancing manageable.

And my life hasn’t faced any kind of catastrophic impact. I still have my normal job as a prosecutor, though I work from home 6-of-8 days now. This blog goes forward. All of my family remains healthy and employed. Same with my friends. I’m still in an incredibly fortunate place.

My guess is that we won’t be able to open up in a lot of major metro areas for a long while. Dr. Fauci thinks we might get a second wave in the winter too.

We should be prepared for a real chance that college football doesn’t occur. First, I don’t think they’ll do the no fans thing. If it’s too dangerous to have fans, then I think they’ll say it’s too risky for unpaid players to play. A football game—even with a reduction in staff and suited players—is probably at least 60 people on each sideline. That’s probably a very low number too. But if you have 120 personnel for two teams, the scoring crew, broadcasting crews and media, then you’re talking about at least 170 people in a confined space (and I think this is a pretty low estimate). If there is a risk of the virus spreading because of crowds, then we’re at a real risk of the season getting delayed/cancelled.

Second, football has a much earlier decision day than September. The violence and complexity of the sport require practice and conditioning. They’re not going to have the guys show up in late August and play a week later. Maybe they eliminate nonconference games or even push back bowl games and the playoff, but we need to get this under control early. I really hope we get college football. But I’m trying to prepare myself for the possibility it doesn’t happen.

Our best bet seems to be that these quarantines get us a path to reopening, and that warmer weather lowers the virus over the late spring and early summer. Then hopefully some of these antiviral drugs prove effective, and we’re not left with multiple extremely deadly waves before a vaccine comes in 12 to 18 months.

NCAA Payouts:

Matt Norlander of CBS Sports notes:

Had the Division I men’s basketball NCAA Tournament gone on as scheduled, the NCAA was anticipating paying out is D-I membership approximately $600 million this year. But with no tournament, the NCAA announced on Thursday that the figure will be $225 million and will be dispersed as always among all 32 conferences.

The vote by the NCAA’s Board of Governors was unanimous; the money will be handed out in June — as opposed to the initial timeline of April — “specifically focus on supporting college athletes.”

Bob Bowlsby also said the Big 12 lost between $5.5 and $6 million by not having the conference tournaments in basketball.

So we’ll see how this impacts various institutions. I don’t think the major conferences are going to cut sports, but the less well off certainly could.

Theatrical Releases on TV:

I would never watch “The Hunt” in a normal time. But when I could spend $19 to watch it during the pandemic, I had to do it. I would have hated it during a normal time, but I was okay with it now.

I didn’t plan to watch the Ben Affleck movie where he coaches basketball while being an alcoholic annoyed the kids aren’t as good at basketball as him. But it’s on TV for $19. You better believe I’m buying and watching it.

I have no power to resist these movies. I’ll pay for almost any movie that I can’t see in theaters now because of social distancing/essential business orders. It doesn’t matter that I wouldn’t have seen these in normal times. I’m seeing them all now. I hope they slow down on these releases because I’m going to go broke watching them.