@MarkKnudson41
Strike One: Regardless of where your loyalties reside, you should be rooting hard for Colorado State University right about now.
At many institutions of higher learning, there’s a disconnect between the academic folks and the athletic department (Hello, University of Colorado?) Those who do all that very valuable classroom instruction during the week aren’t always big fans of the guys who get all the attention on Saturday afternoons.
Obviously, the current pandemic has changed a lot of perspectives on a lot of things. Everyone’s in this together now, fighting a common enemy. And in this battle, it could very well be that those who’s focus has been more on Saturdays than on weekdays now find themselves at the mercy of the academic types. In short, it’s appearing more and more like it’s going to take some sort of critical breakthrough from the medical community to save the 2020 college football season.
A recent quote from NCAA Doctor Carlos Del Rio on an “Inside the NCAA” video series: “I hate to say it, but for this calendar year, we may never return to normal without a vaccine or some strategies in place.”
“Normal” right now is like a pass that’s been batted up in the air at the line of scrimmage and is just fluttering up in the air. We’re all waiting to see where it lands.
What we do know is that there may not be a football season at all…or it may be delayed…or that games might be played in empty stadiums. A recent poll by Seton Hall University showed that more than 70% of fans won’t attend football games this fall if they haven’t been vaccinated. And right now, the conventional thinking is that a vaccine is a long way off. Maybe a year or more away.
Then again, what about any of this is conventional? It’s always been hard to fathom that it’s going to take 12-18 months to find a vaccine for COVID-19. That makes no sense. Sure, that might be the normal timetable for typical development of typical medications for a typical malady. This is different. Very different. You have a global crisis that calls for the smartest people on the planet to ALL work 24/7 on finding a cure. And you know that they are, and that someone they WILL come up with something sooner than a year from now. Hopefully much sooner. Maybe by this summer?
In fact, they may be getting close at CSU. A recent feature on a Denver TV station has highlighted what could end up being the most important development for CSU’s 2020 football season: Groundbreaking research at CSU’s Research Innovation Center.
According the CBS4 website: “Researchers at Colorado State University are closing in on a coronavirus vaccine which could be consumed orally, which would make the medication drastically more accessible to people all around the world.”
Basically, this research team in Fort Collins is working around the clock to find a cure. Quickly. And if they do so in the not too distant future, we could have that “normal(ish)” football season.
“If CSU is successful at creating the consumable vaccine for coronavirus, Dean said production could be done quickly, with medications delivered to our community, and even third world countries, with relative ease.”
Go Rams!
The CSU people emphasize that this is NOT a sure thing, that clinical trials are needed and testing on animals hasn’t even begun yet. They note that more of these things fail in trials than succeed.
So…a Hail Mary? Perhaps. But sometimes those long passes get caught, right? And if they connect, Colorado State University researchers could end up saving the Rams – and everyone else’s – football season.
Talk about bragging rights.
Strike Two: We’re now more than a month into the shutdown of sports that started the night everyone – including non-sports fans who hadn’t before – heard the name Rudy Gobert. Those two words changed everything.
On March 11th, we found out in the hours prior to his Utah Jazz playing at game in Oklahoma City against the Thunder, that Gobert, Utah’s All-Star center, had tested positive for COVID-19. That would be the last night NBA games were played, including the Denver Nuggets loss at Dallas. Once a player had tested positive, the league suspended play.
The dominoes fell quickly after that. NHL, college hoops, MLB, the College World Series…and they’re still falling.
But what if Gobert – and shortly after that, Jazz teammate Donovan Mitchell – had NOT tested positive?
COVID-19 was already a grave concern in most places (perhaps not Washington D.C.) prior to March 11th. The state of California had already put restrictions on large public gatherings, and the game at Golden State the next night between the Warriors and the Brooklyn Nets was scheduled to be played in an arena without fans. It would have been weird to watch, but sports fans most certainly would have tuned in. So the alarm had already sounded, it just wasn’t blaring – until Rudy Gobert.
All we can do is speculate, but absent of an active player testing positive, it’s probable that the college basketball conference tournaments that were going on that weekend would have continued. Perhaps with fans, perhaps without. The NBA would probably not have suspended play…but more games would have been played in empty arenas in the days that followed. March Madness and MLB Spring Training? They’d have probably continued on. There were no indications that MLB games in Arizona were going to have to be played without fans, but it’s likely that March Madness would have been a little less maddening because those games probably wouldn’t have had crowd in the stands. For how much longer? Anyone’s guess.
But remember, with huge TV ratings/dollars at stake, these games were going to be played with or without their “studio audiences” at most any cost. Until…
One month ago, we didn’t know the term “social distancing” did we?
Medical experts all agree that social distancing guidelines have in fact saved thousands of lives already. And a whole whole lot of people with unused tickets to March Madness or NBA or NHL or Spring Training games are probably NOT sick today because of that…and because Rudy Gobert tested positive on March 11th.
This should make Gobert something of an unwitting hero, right? Or will history forever associate him with the virus and paint him as some sort of “Typhoid Rudy?”
How will Gobert be remembered when his playing days are over? Will he get the “Bill Buckner” treatment from some? Buckner had an amazing career in Major League Baseball, collecting over 2,700 hits, winning a batting title and becoming an All-Star. But he’s best remembered for making an error in the 10th inning of a 1986 World Series game that contributed his Boston Red Sox losing the series. A stellar career reduced to one single mistake.
Gobert didn’t make an error. He caught a deadly virus. Yet it’s very possible that “catch” will be what he’s remembered for, much the same way Buckner’s remembered for what he didn’t catch.
Strike Three: MLB is working hard on multiple plans for some kind of abbreviated baseball season. Could be games with no fans, or it could be games all played at spring training sites, or something we’ve yet to hear about. But it’s hard to imagine they won’t find a way to play some sort of season.
In any abbreviated season, which will follow a resumption or a “do over” of spring training, will look different in various ways…especially on the pitcher’s mound.
If MLB players returned to camps tomorrow (which obviously isn’t happening) we’d still be three weeks away from real games – and even then, starting pitchers wouldn’t be ready to go full tilt for six or seven innings. It would take several more weeks for them to reach the point conditioning-wise where they could produce a quality start.
Instead, when the season starts, it could very well look a lot like the Colorado Rockies did back in 2012. Remember “Piggy-backing?”
During that season, the Rockies shifted to a four-man, rather than the standard five-man, starting pitching rotation. They limited each start from their very green and inexperienced starters to 75 pitches. The starter had a designated “piggy backer” ready to come in behind him and take over on the mound when he hit his pitch limit. The piggy backer was also on a pitch count.
This was well before the concept of an “opener” was ever considered at the big league level. Eight seasons ago, starters were starters and relievers were relievers. That was it. The line had not been blurred yet.
It has been now of course, and this season – in whatever strange form it takes – will blur it even further. This season, the most valuable members of each team’s pitching staff will be the guys who are the most versatile, able to go multiple inning in the middle of a game when called upon.
For the Rockies – whether they play home games at Coors Field or Salt River Fields – we could very well see a four-man rotation of Jon Gray, Kyle Freeland, German Marquez and Antonio Senzatela take the starts, with perhaps Chi Chi Gonzalez, Jeff Hoffman, Peter Lambert and others coming in to “piggy back” each game. If that group can get Colorado into the 7th inning most nights, then Bud Black can use his late inning relievers as he normally would.
Rosters were already expanded to 26 players for this year, and are likely to be expanded even more when the season does begin to accommodate some extra arms. So it makes perfect sense for the Rockies and other big league teams to shift their pitching plans and return to the days when the Rockies were laughed at for their approach to using their starters.
This time, it won’t be looked upon as some kind of joke.