Slowly, now, we adjust to the light, here in this new American dimness. We pick up a book. We stream Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime. We order carryout and sit around the kitchen table at dinner, congratulating ourselves for supporting our local restaurants.
It is not the same as going out, but we can't go out now. The other day we were still hoisting a few and watching college buckets and spring training games at the local watering hole, but the other day was light years ago. Now the bars and restaurants are closed, and sports have gone dark.
Just last week we were gearing up for the conference tournaments and the Madness beyond; now we look up, and here's ESPN airing the 1983 ACC championship game to fill its empty hours. Wow, was Dick Vitale ever that young? And speaking of young ... Look! There's Jim Valvano!
The cancer hasn't come for him yet. He's still young and antic and bursting with life. It is all unbearably poignant.
And yet we watch, and we think about all that won't happen this week or for however many weeks beyond, and we shake our heads at what still seems unimaginable. And those of us who were in the sportswriting biz before we became retired old farts wonder what it must be like these days, trying to fill a daily section.
"It's like Christmas Eve on steroids," answers my former sports editor, when I ask him.
Christmas Eve being the deadest day of the year in the sports world, in the days before COVID-19.
Now every day is Christmas Eve, and only the business of sports goes on. So at least there's that.
At least there's this: The Colts just plucked stickout defensive tackle DeForrest Buckner from that scary 49ers defense, giving up the 13th pick in the draft for him. Well, here's some meat to gnaw on from that mostly naked bone. Giving up the 13th pick? Does this mean they won't be drafting a quarterback after all? Does it mean the rumors are true about Philip Rivers, or have they decided to cast their lot with Jacoby Brissett after all?
The Blob's betting it's the former, although it's hard to say if a 38-year-old who's been in the league since Dubya's first term is an upgrade over Brissett. Sounds like we're about to find out, though.
And speaking of about to find out ... hey, look who's back! It's Rick Pitino!
Yes, Mr. I-See-Nothing has re-emerged in college basketball, proving once again that no transgression is transgressive enough to deny a man a second act in American life. There are simply too many people too hungry for Ws out there.
And so Kelvin Sampson is at Houston now and Bruce Pearl is at Auburn, and now Iona has hired Rick Pitino, who left a program at Louisville that was crawling with sleaze. One assistant was running what amounted to a cathouse out of the very building where Pitino worked every day. Another got caught in the FBI probe allegedly paying $100,000 to the family of a recruit, which is what got Pitino fired.
Pitino, of course, claimed he knew nothing about any of it. Almost no one believed him, nor should have. Now he's issued the standard mea culpa, saying he was the head coach and the responsibility was his, and he should never have said otherwise.
"I deserved to be fired," he says now.
Which all sounds good, even if it's what a guy tends to say when he's been handed a second chance he probably doesn't deserve. Iona thinks he does, clearly. And of course that has nothing to do with the fact Iona has gotten past the first round of the NCAA Tournament just once in the last 40 years, and went 29-33 the last two seasons.
Iona, by the way, was where Jim Valvano got his start, where he first came to college basketball's attention.
A few years later, it was 1983, and there he was at North Carolina State, young and antic and full of life. And now, in this new dimness, we turn on our TVs, and we can see 1983 again, see a young Dicky V. and a young Jim Valvano, the cancer that would kill him still a long way off
Strange times. Such strange, strange times.
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