Opinion: Playing college basketball is madness with COVID-19 raging. Just ask the coaches

Krzyzewski is not alone in his concern about continuing to play a sport during these incredibly trying times. One of his former players and assistants, Pittsburgh men’s coach Jeff Capel, was asked Monday at his news conference if the season should have been delayed until sometime in January.

“If you look at the numbers, yes,” he said. “It’s interesting to me, if you look at the numbers back in March when the season was canceled, the numbers are worse right now than they were back in March. I don’t know who the leadership is, but maybe they would think about a little bit of a pause just so kids can be with their families for Christmas, coaches can be with their families. But most importantly, what’s going on in our country right now as far as these numbers is staggering.”

Nearly a month ago, Iona men’s coach Rick Pitino tweeted, “Save the Season. Move the start back. Play league schedule and have May Madness. Spiking and protocols make it impossible to play right now.”

That’s three well-known coaches, all of them calling for a delay in the season, or at least a serious look at pausing for a month or so. This is different from what we saw with college football, where so many tough-guy coaches thought they could pummel the coronavirus, when in fact it has been the other way around.

So why aren’t we listening to them and doing something about it?

“It’s chaos,” ESPN analyst Dick Vitale said Wednesday afternoon in a phone interview. “We need a czar for college basketball. We need it badly. We need it in recruiting. We need it in situations like this. Right now, there’s no uniformity. People don’t realize the mental frustration for the players, the coaches, everyone. It’s just chaos, but I want to make it clear that what we’re dealing with in basketball has absolutely no comparison to those suffering from COVID, to the people on ventilators, to the people dying.”

The solution is simple. Stop the season. Stop the games, men’s and women’s, right now. There’s no shame in this. It’s the smart thing to do. Every college and pro league in every sport has had to adjust their plans, not only for 2020, but also for 2021. And while the college basketball season officially began in late November, 33 men’s teams still have not played one game because of COVID-19 interruptions, so the season hasn’t even begun for them.

“Why can’t we move this season to March 1 and play the tournament in May?” Vitale said. “I think they should sit back and reevaluate everything because, with the pandemic, it’s just going to get worse.”

March Madness? May Madness? Right now, it’s just plain old madness.