Six short years.
That’s what stands between the basketball mania we are all enjoying ahead of another NCAA Tournament and the dark day the Big Dance was called off altogether. On March 12, 2020, the NCAA terminated the tournament due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
One by one, the conference tournaments that were underway began to shut down. The West Coast Conference tournament was already over, and BYU was back in Provo practicing for what they anticipated would be a feverishly deep run into March Madness.
The Cougars got the word around the same time Gary Sheide and I were told not to go to Larry H. Miller Field, where we were planning to announce the first game of the weekend baseball series between BYU and LMU for BYUtv.
In a flash, everything that had been normal was turned upside down — in employment, at school, at church and in our homes.
Working as an evening anchor for KSL-TV, a crew showed up in Provo and put a transmitter on our backyard deck. Then, they ran cables through the house, up the stairs and down the hall into an office that quickly transitioned into a mini studio. With the flip of a switch, I was live on Channel 5 — but there was nothing normal about it.
“It will be just for a week or two,” station management told us.
Hardly.
No, life was different for a long time — for everybody on the planet. Without as many planes in the sky, school buses in the streets or public gatherings, we were all handed a new playbook. For some, the pandemic drove them to their knees while others put up their dukes.
Previous crises, like war or natural disasters, seemed to bring people together, but our response to COVID-19 didn’t really do that. In some cases, it pushed us further apart. The lives that were lost, the constant barrage of bad news in the media and the wrangling among politicians both scared us and wore us out.
It was a different kind of March Madness that just kept going.
In hindsight, I’d like to think we would do a lot of things differently if we could do things over. Without that option, we are left to learn from the past, “Live in the Now” (to quote the late Patti Edwards) and do things better in the future.
It is with great gratitude that Gary and I are back at Miller Park this week to call the BYU-Cincinnati series and the Cougars are battling in Kansas City at the Big 12 Tournament as a lock to play in next week’s NCAA Tournament.
In so many ways, everything feels the same as it did prior to COVID-19, where you could walk into a Costa Vida with the entire family and sit down for dinner. But how have we changed?
As survivors of it all, are we kinder, gentler, more appreciative of those who we love and work with? Do we look for ways to lift the burdens of a neighbor or even open the door for the person walking behind us? When it comes to entertainment and social interactions, are we a better sport about how we pull for our team to beat another?
If not, we can be.
Problems are everywhere, but so is so much good across Utah. Without question, this is a special time of year for basketball, where everybody is looking for that “One Shining Moment.” Reminders of anniversaries, like March 12, 2020, can inspire us to create our own “special moments” — and the fact that BYU has its act together is all the more reason to make the most of March Madness.
The music is back on for the Big Dance. Feel free to turn it up and dance with it!
Dave McCann is a sportswriter and columnist for the Deseret News and is a play-by-play announcer and show host for BYUtv/ESPN+. He co-hosts “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com and is the author of the children’s book “C is for Cougar,” available at deseretbook.com.