Hometown Broadcasting Sports Friday 4/10/20
10 April 2020 Sports
Citing a time of “unprecedented uncertainty in college athletics,” Wisconsin officials announced on Thursday that the Badgers would not seek waivers for seniors in spring sports whose final seasons were cut short by the coronavirus pandemic.
Last month, the NCAA Division I Council approved an extension of eligibility for athletes in spring sports and relaxed scholarship limits to allow seniors in spring sports to return for the 2020-21 academic year.
The NCAA also left it up to each institution to decide whether to grant seniors in spring sports less or equal financial aid next year, compared to what they received this year. The NCAA said in a statement that the financial aid flexibility applied only to student-athletes who would have exhausted their eligibility in 2019-20.
“UW Athletics places tremendous emphasis on its student-athletes earning an undergraduate degree and having a great competitive experience,” Wisconsin officials said in the statement. “In the case of the UW spring student-athletes to which the NCAA’s waiver would apply, a substantial percentage of the student-athletes are scheduled to earn their degrees before next spring. In spite of today’s uncertainties, we will do everything possible to support our student-athletes as they work toward those degrees.
“The athletic department has made the decision to not pursue waivers that would extend the eligibility of our senior student-athletes. Student-athletes in their fourth year of eligibility have concluded their careers with us. This group of student-athletes has our full support up to, including and beyond graduation. They are Badgers for life and we are greatly appreciative of the way they have represented our department and the university.”
Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez said Wisconsin’s decision would affect about 35 seniors in spring sports, and that many of them already had internships or jobs lined up.
Wisconsin has projected a revenue shortfall of more than $4 million because of the cancellation of the NCAA basketball tournaments and championship events in other spring sports.
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NBA players will receive their full checks when the next payday for most of them arrives on April 15, even though no games will have been played for more than a month at that point.
The league gave teams the directive on Thursday in a memo that was obtained by ESPN.
The league and the National Basketball Players Association have been in talks for weeks about the status of salaries during the NBA’s shutdown. The last games were played March 11, the day that Utah center Rudy Gobert became the first player in the league to test positive for the coronavirus.
The pandemic will lead to the delay of at least 259 regular-season games through April 15, what would have been the end of the regular season. NBA commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this week that no decisions about the rest of the season, including whether play can resume, would occur before May.
None of the games have been canceled yet. The playoffs were to begin on April 18, and the losses in revenue should the season be shortened or not finished could easily reach hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby has been speaking with the other Power 5 conference commissioners daily and said Thursday that he remains concerned about “whether or not we can have a full and robust football season” as the future of the sport remains uncertain because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Bowlsby declined to say which specific models the league is considering if the season has to be altered or pushed back. The Big 12 implemented a 10% salary cut across the board in the conference office, including for Bowlsby.
Bowlsby said the conference isn’t ready to put any deadlines on any decisions.
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There is no Masters this week, but had it been played at Augusta National, Tiger Woods says he would have been there in good health and ready to go.
Woods, who has not competed since Feb. 16 at the Genesis Invitational and missed at least two tournaments he would have normally played, told endorser GolfTV that he has been using the time away due to the coronavirus pandemic to his advantage.
Woods, 44, has played just twice in 2020, finishing in a tie for ninth at the Farmers Insurance Open in January and then 68th — last among those who made the cut — at the Genesis Invitational.
It was there where he disclosed back problems that led him to skip the following week’s tournament in Mexico. There had been little information about his health in the interim.
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The sports world has been at a standstill due to the coronavirus pandemic for roughly a month, and despite the widespread eagerness to restart games, a majority of Americans in a recent poll would not attend sporting events in person just yet.
A whopping 72% of Americans polled said they would not attend sporting events should they resume soon without a vaccine for coronavirus. The poll, which had a fairly small sample size of 762 respondents, was released Thursday by Seton Hall University’s Stillman School of Business.
When polling respondents who identified as sports fans, 61% said they would not go to the game without a vaccine. The margin of error is plus-or-minus 3.6%.
Only 12% of all respondents said they would go to games if social distancing could be maintained, which would likely lead to a highly reduced number of fans, staff and media at games.
The poll shows that the coronavirus pandemic is going to affect sports for the foreseeable future, even if some resume.
Just 13% of Americans said they would feel comfortable attending sports games again the way they had in the past.
A compromise could be found in having games with no fans, an idea that garnered a sufficient amount of support. More than three-fourths — 76% — said they would watch broadcasts of games without fans and do so with the same amount of interest they had before the pandemic. Only 16% said they would be less interested, but 7% said they would be more interested.
Though there have been discussion of games without spectators, nearly half of respondents — 46% — think that sports will be canceled through the end of 2020.
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