This time, Madness won’t be stopped

Postponement wasn’t an option, and somehow the NCAA recognized this before most people did. If college sports’ governing body is known for anything, it’s being stuck hopelessly behind the times, but a year ago it acted with uncharacteristic decisiveness, sending a jolt through a sports world that hadn’t quite faced reality yet. No brackets?

No Cinderella?

No one shining moment?

Not at all?

This was unfathomable, the same way a lot of other truths were about to be, but the NCAA saw it had no other move. The NBA could wait on a bubble and push its playoffs back a few months. The Olympics could reschedule for the next year. But once the calendar flipped into April or May, any hope of salvaging a college basketball season would be gone for good.

No tournaments in 2020 meant the men’s and women’s championships would remain forever unclaimed, and the fallout was predictably immense. The cancellation cost the NCAA $600 million, about half of its annual revenue, and while that didn’t stop schools from awarding obscene buyouts to bad football coaches, it did lead to layoffs, furloughs and disbanded teams.

So when March returns Monday?

This time it will include madness, no matter what.

Postponement won’t be an option this year, either, and the NCAA provided some details this week on how the show will go on even if it can’t keep the coronavirus away. Once the entire men’s field heads to Indianapolis and all 64 women’s teams arrive in San Antonio, there won’t be any pauses, and there won’t be any exceptions (at least in the early going).

If positive tests pop up and a team can’t safely take the floor, it will forfeit and the rest of the tournament will move on with

out it.

Considering the grand scale of this event, as well as its specific place on the sports calendar, this is an understandable approach. Any delays would throw a wrench into broadcast schedules, and considering the money the schools lost last year, broadcast revenue is more important than it’s ever been.

So the NCAA has allowed for some contingencies, but only to a point.

Once the men’s bracket is set on Selection Sunday (March 14), the seedings will not change. (This, conveniently enough, is helpful for those setting up office pools, which are responsible in no small part for the interest generated by the tournament.) But there will be a 48hour window in which any tournament team that has to be removed from the field because of a COVID-19 outbreak can be replaced.

In practice, it could work like this:

On March 14, Gonzaga is announced as the No. 1 overall seed in the 68-team men’s tournament field. Four teams that didn’t make the cut are listed as at-large replacement teams. The first of these is Duke, which limped through one of its worst seasons in recent memory.

On the morning of March 16, Gonzaga learns that because of positive tests and contact tracing, it will not be able to send its team to Indianapolis that weekend. That means it is replaced as a No. 1 seed by Duke, which goes from missing the tournament completely to playing a firstround game against a No. 16 seed.

As a hypothetical example, is this extreme, unlikely and unfair? Perhaps. But it’s a process the NCAA is willing to embrace if it ensures the games get played.

Similar procedures will be in place for the women, who will play at five venues around the area beginning March 21, leading up to the championship game at the Alamodome on April 4.

Would organizers love it if an in-state powerhouse like Texas A&M or Baylor makes it that far? Absolutely.

But the only real priority is that someone does.

Rousing stories will emerge, both here and in Indianapolis, just like they almost always do this time of year. On the men’s side, four of the top 20 teams in the country hail from Texas, including undefeated Baylor, which has another shot at the men’s/women’s trophy sweep it never got to pursue last year.

The Bears, though, also serve as a reminder about the danger of taking too much for granted.

Even as coronavirus cases have abated across much of the country over the past month, Baylor has found it difficult to shake, having six games in a row postponed before playing Iowa State on Tuesday. And if a team like the Spurs can see five positive tests even while adhering to the NBA’s strict protocols, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the same thing happen to a squad in Indianapolis or San Antonio next month.

Just like a year ago, the NCAA sees what can go wrong. Just like a year ago, postponement is not an option.

But this year, that means March Madness is going to happen right on time. And it’s not going to stop for anybody.