The Sound Of Silence Takes Over The Sporting World
March 18, 2020 at 12:44 a.m.
The Sound Of Silence Takes Over The Sporting World
By Roger Grossman-
I was thinking that, under normal circumstances, the high school boys regional semifinals would be just finishing up. The college basketball conference tournaments would be winding to a close.
Plus, there was playoff positioning going on for the NBA and NHL and quests to make Opening Day rosters for pro baseball players.
We are in anything but normal circumstances.
The roaring crowds were replaced with the hollow echoes of the heating units at the gyms.
It was a Simon and Garfunkel kind of day—the Sound of Silence.
And that will become the new normal, at least for a while.
So the questions are two-fold: “what do us sports people do now?” and “when was the last time we had something like this happen?”
The answer to the first is “be smart, be safe and follow instructions.”
The second, well, we have to go back a ways.
Yes, the terrorist attacks in the fall of 2001 did shut down all of sports and rightfully so. Organized sporting events were not appropriate in the days following those dreadful actions.
However, after we realized in the days after September 11 that what had happened was all that was going to happen, we started to realize that it wouldn’t be long before we slipped into a new sense of “normal” out of defiance to those who had done what they had done and out of a need to prove to ourselves that we were, long term, going to be ok.
What is happening to us now doesn’t seem to have such an ending.
It occurred to me sitting in my chair Saturday that there was a time I remembered that I could draw on to create some comparisons and parallels.
In 1978, my brother Bruce played on the first Argos basketball team to ever win the sectional. It was the beginning of four consecutive sectional titles for the folks in south-central Marshall County, which was highlighted by a trip to the 1979 Final Four and 76 consecutive regular season wins.
In March of ’78 the US was in an energy crisis. OPEC nations were holding a grudge against America for supplying Israel with weapons to fend off an effort by Syria and Egypt to take back land lost to them, and it led to an embargo of oil delivery to the US.
There were long lines at our gas stations. Videos of cars and trucks being pushed to pumps because they had run out of gas while waiting in line were a regular occurrence on the nightly news.
Unnecessary travel was strongly discouraged, and that included teams who would be heading off to play in basketball regionals and the fans who were eager to watch them play.
So, in a spirit of cooperation, the IHSAA delayed the boys’ state basketball tournament’s last three rounds by three weeks.
It seemed unfair to force teams to come back to playing in such important games after missing three weeks of game action, so the commissioners allowed schools to schedule practice games. Some of them were played in empty gyms but many were played in front of fans who were stir-crazy for anything positive.
Argos was involved in a public game — actually a doubleheader of games — at a special venue … the Athletic and Convocation Center at the University of Notre Dame.
The Dragons played a friendly game against South Bend LaSalle. The Lions had a special player named David Magley, who went on to play college basketball at Kansas and was the 28th overall selection in the 1982 NBA Draft. He’s now commissioner of The Basketball League.
For a 10-year old Notre Dame fan like me, to have your brother play a game (even under the circumstances) in that place—was the best thing ever! I didn’t really care about gas prices or energy issues, and I certainly couldn’t show you where Iran was on a map.
But the IHSAA put their beloved tournament on hold for three weeks until the nation’s situation allowed it to return. Unfortunately, a delay like that in 2020 seems like it would put the state finals around Independence Day. And that’s just not going to work.
The words penned by Paul Simon in that famous song seem so fitting: “Hello darkness, my old friend…I’ve come to talk with you again.”
Dark gyms, dark arenas, dark ball parks … and the sound of silence.
I was thinking that, under normal circumstances, the high school boys regional semifinals would be just finishing up. The college basketball conference tournaments would be winding to a close.
Plus, there was playoff positioning going on for the NBA and NHL and quests to make Opening Day rosters for pro baseball players.
We are in anything but normal circumstances.
The roaring crowds were replaced with the hollow echoes of the heating units at the gyms.
It was a Simon and Garfunkel kind of day—the Sound of Silence.
And that will become the new normal, at least for a while.
So the questions are two-fold: “what do us sports people do now?” and “when was the last time we had something like this happen?”
The answer to the first is “be smart, be safe and follow instructions.”
The second, well, we have to go back a ways.
Yes, the terrorist attacks in the fall of 2001 did shut down all of sports and rightfully so. Organized sporting events were not appropriate in the days following those dreadful actions.
However, after we realized in the days after September 11 that what had happened was all that was going to happen, we started to realize that it wouldn’t be long before we slipped into a new sense of “normal” out of defiance to those who had done what they had done and out of a need to prove to ourselves that we were, long term, going to be ok.
What is happening to us now doesn’t seem to have such an ending.
It occurred to me sitting in my chair Saturday that there was a time I remembered that I could draw on to create some comparisons and parallels.
In 1978, my brother Bruce played on the first Argos basketball team to ever win the sectional. It was the beginning of four consecutive sectional titles for the folks in south-central Marshall County, which was highlighted by a trip to the 1979 Final Four and 76 consecutive regular season wins.
In March of ’78 the US was in an energy crisis. OPEC nations were holding a grudge against America for supplying Israel with weapons to fend off an effort by Syria and Egypt to take back land lost to them, and it led to an embargo of oil delivery to the US.
There were long lines at our gas stations. Videos of cars and trucks being pushed to pumps because they had run out of gas while waiting in line were a regular occurrence on the nightly news.
Unnecessary travel was strongly discouraged, and that included teams who would be heading off to play in basketball regionals and the fans who were eager to watch them play.
So, in a spirit of cooperation, the IHSAA delayed the boys’ state basketball tournament’s last three rounds by three weeks.
It seemed unfair to force teams to come back to playing in such important games after missing three weeks of game action, so the commissioners allowed schools to schedule practice games. Some of them were played in empty gyms but many were played in front of fans who were stir-crazy for anything positive.
Argos was involved in a public game — actually a doubleheader of games — at a special venue … the Athletic and Convocation Center at the University of Notre Dame.
The Dragons played a friendly game against South Bend LaSalle. The Lions had a special player named David Magley, who went on to play college basketball at Kansas and was the 28th overall selection in the 1982 NBA Draft. He’s now commissioner of The Basketball League.
For a 10-year old Notre Dame fan like me, to have your brother play a game (even under the circumstances) in that place—was the best thing ever! I didn’t really care about gas prices or energy issues, and I certainly couldn’t show you where Iran was on a map.
But the IHSAA put their beloved tournament on hold for three weeks until the nation’s situation allowed it to return. Unfortunately, a delay like that in 2020 seems like it would put the state finals around Independence Day. And that’s just not going to work.
The words penned by Paul Simon in that famous song seem so fitting: “Hello darkness, my old friend…I’ve come to talk with you again.”
Dark gyms, dark arenas, dark ball parks … and the sound of silence.
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