Facing a March without Madness

Saturday of Championship Week is always a day I spend parked in front of the TV and try to watch as many games as possible.

But Championship Week came to an abrupt end on Thursday, as conference after conference cancelled their tournaments, some with teams still on the floor. Then shortly after 3pm Central Time, the NCAA did the right thing — for a change — and canceled the NCAA tournament.

March Madness, canceled.

Everything happened so fast. The moment Rudy Gobert was announced to have tested positive for Coronavirus and the NBA suspended it’s season this results was always inevitable. You can’t start a tournament and at any point have a player test positive. If a tournament of over 900 players began a tournament and one player on the court tested positive, you have to shut the entire thing down.

If that’s the nearly certain end result, and all you’re going to do in the meantime is put lives at risk, there’s no reason to move forward other than arrogance. And the NCAA is plenty arrogant for all of us, so this was a nice change of pace.

As tough as the end of this week was for me, next week is likely to be worse. We’ve been asked to work from home for the foreseeable future, and I gave up my previously requested off days on Thursday and Friday — so I could watch the tournament uninterrupted obviously. Two days off of work to vegetate, eat pizza, drink adult beverages, and watch hoops. Then a beautiful Saturday and Sunday to enjoy the round of 32.

For the last two days I’ve tried to figure out what to do in March when there isn’t basketball on. We (my wife and I) started McMillions on HBO, finished I Am Not Okay With This on Netflix, and I started watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. I’d never watched Curb before, and I can report I think it’s great actually. Maybe it means I’m a terrible person, but I feel like Larry David is unfairly maligned throughout at least the first season.

On top of that I completed my census questionnaire last night.

But now I face a full Saturday, without basketball. What is everyone else going to do?

Consider this your Saturday Live Thread as we self-quarantine and figure out what to do with ourselves.