Where did everything go?

March is typically one of best and busiest months for sports fans — but not this year

With most sports on virus hiatus, the world just doesn’t feel right.

A world without sports.

How surreal, uneven and unthinkable would it be?

What would our world look like?

What would our world be like?

This.

What we’re all living, right now.

Empty. Blank. Stuck on pause, with the play button missing. Repetitive. Numb. Frozen in March.

And weird. I mean, really, really weird.

The pulsing pride and roaring joy of the NCAA Tournament and March Madness: Canceled.

The upstart XFL: Canceled.

The NBA’s 82-game season: Officially suspended. MLB’s annually redeeming and uplifting Opening Day: Also postponed.

The same for the PGA and the annual beauty of the Masters. And MLS. And NASCAR and IndyCar.

All because of the mounting chaos from the coronavirus.

Imagine, for a moment, that you had been asleep for a week. You suddenly wake up Sunday afternoon. You eventually turn on a TV. You start flipping through all your normal, trusted sports channels and keep finding … nothing.

Seriously. Nothing.

James Harden and Russell Westbrook aren’t playing. Kelvin Sampson and the University of Houston men’s basketball team can’t be found. José Altuve, Alex Bregman and George Springer are invisible.

LeBron James. Mike Trout. The Dayton Flyers. Jim Nantz. Fans booing and shouting things at your Astros.

Nothing is happening and everything is missing. It would take a few minutes for the eerie realization to sink in. But then it would punch you in the gut.

Where is everyone?

Where … did … everything … go?

And then you would coldly drop the remote, slowly look out the nearest window and try to find the zombies climbing over a wall, crawling toward your window.

Wednesday night, as the NBA was entering the chaos zone, I compared the NCAA planning to play March Madness games without fans in the stands to the famous scene in “Avengers: Infinity War.” Thanos was about to snap his fingers and make half of the universe disappear.

In our sports world, Wednesday night was old, outdated news by Friday evening.

Postponement after postponement after postponement. Cancellation followed by cancellation, which was followed by another rapid-fire series of cancellations.

Spring and winter sports. The College World Series and high school tournaments. Basketball games stopped right before tipoff, at halftime or just not played.

Only NFL free agency was still on target. Because the NFL and its shield rule the sports world — and the expected start of the 2020 regular season was still about six months away.

All the c cancellations, postponements and numbing emptiness somehow fell within the realm of reason, as schools closed, universities were silenced, the economy shuddered and the coronavirus transported America in 2020 into a real-life disaster movie.

Normally, sports would be our perfect outlet. Hurricane Harvey. Hurricane Katrina. September 11.

In eventual release and unification, we would yell and cheer and scream and curse. We would watch, follow, study, analyze, critique, praise and obsess over the smallest and biggest things.

On the professional and collegiate levels, there basically are no sports right now. And until our country contains this virus and rediscovers stability, everything that we love to yell and cheer and scream for (and curse at) is frozen on pause.

In a superhero blockbuster movie, you get to rely on a super-cheesy, overused plot twist and go back in time. Fix everything in the past, which fixes everything in the present and future.

In the week when our sports world stopped and toilet paper became a national commodity, fixing everything at once was laughable.

So was trying to accurately predict when “normal” would return. In arenas, gyms, stadiums, tracks, courses and fields. At the grocery store, elementary schools and business offices, and in simple daily conversations. And, of course, on all our glossy high-definition TVs.

“This hiatus will be most likely at least 30 days,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on national

TV. “And we don’t know enough … to be more specific than that.”

Could the 2019-20 NBA season just stop in time, forever?

“Of course it’s possible,” Silver said. “I just don’t know more at this point.”

This virus has instantly put everything in perspective.

It’s made endlessly hating on the Astros* look silly, immature and like a waste of time on earth.

It’s made our lingering frustration with the annually disappointing Texans feel like the good ol’ days.

It’s turned sports into a contemporary luxury, rather than a life necessity.

When will Dusty Baker manage his first real game for a team that is supposed to be hated across the country?

Will Mike D’Antoni, Daryl Morey, Harden, Westbrook and Co. even get a chance to prove everyone wrong?

“SportsCenter” is already a bore. Saturday morning, Stephen Curry highlights were being televised — even though Curry has only played in five games this season and Golden State is the worst team in the NBA.

What our local sports world needs now: A feisty Bill O’Brien press conference inside NRG Stadium, just so we know that everything is right.

Friday evening, I saw a couple bicyclists circling around a parking lot. The simple sight looked more intriguing and powerful than ever.

ERA, OPS, Harden’s 3-point percentage and Lance McCullers Jr.’s innings count don’t matter. Our minute-by-minute, tweet-by-tweet obsession with everything sports — scores, stats, winning streaks, fifth-inning go-ahead singles and whether UH received a No. 7 or 8 seed — has been paused for the foreseeable future.

No one knows where this is going or when it’s going to end.

But we already know this: We need America and the world to get right.

We also need the daily beauty of sports back in our lives.