CougarCorner

I work in the old folks insurance arm of the medical field and also get to hear inside numbers from doctors and clinics that apply to the sickness, contagion, and likelihood of #19 being already vastly spread. From my perspective (the true numbers as we have them so far, not the news), the biggest issue by far is the unintended consequences of our reactions.

Here are my questions about some possible unintended consequences. They're about sports so I put them in the same thread. Will remote/online school and employment remove fan bases as participants in games? Will threats of governments or attorneys remove large crowds that form the home field advantage? Will those threats remove players? Is this the excuse needed for schools who can survive on football or basketball by television to form their own clubs and leave the NCAA? Will athletes go to semi-pro leagues and if that sequence of consequences occurs will other college sports in general fail because they can't carry their own water financially? Is this a good excuse for universities to end the debt most of them have in their sports programs? Will we have to move to simulations?

I only address the sports angle so please no hijacking.

I mean if the long term result is that all universities stay at 90% online learning with almost empty campuses then yeah that will be weird. But once the virus is contained/gone I think we return pretty much back to normal. But the longer this goes on the more entrenched online learning will become.

In some ways I do think that is a good thing because it should bring costs down. Should a student who doesn't touch foot on campus have to pay full tuition? Maybe we don't need all of these full-blown universities with state of the art gyms and all of the other pampered amenities that are at least part of the reason why tuiton costs are so high. If students are there just for learning and the degree, let's strip everything else away that is not absolute necessary.

Now, with all this being said, when I did my MBA, I chose night time classes away from my family over an online MBA because I valued face-to-face interactions with my professors and fellow students.

So to bring this back to sports. I think we return to somewhat normal levels with mostly full campuses but with more online learning. So long term I don't think we end up with just simulations.

I think stadiums get smaller, broadcast packages may stagnate a bit if the economy stays in recession or enters a depression, but eventually those view-from-somewhere-else rights become even more of the future of sports funding because folks are going to be conscious about social-distancing etc. for years to come.

Is this a solution against the virus?

I think there will be a drop in attendance to less than 50% of what it use to be. It will be hard to justify the multi million dollar salaries of many of the coaches. Basketball has a few more months for things to return to whatever normal will be but they will be reduced as well. Schools may have to reduce traveling budgets and therefor they may have to play schools closer to them.

Scott, I think that's the sheep that has been shown around. I hope the wolves went hungry. We benefit a lot more from sheep than the kidnapped wolves who eat them.