Kevin Gorman: Shutdown of the sports world showed us that leaders are not to be trusted

In a surreal span of 24 hours, the sports world shut down and sent a mighty message about the power of a global pandemic.

The games mustn’t go on.

All that talk about concerns over the coronavirus couldn’t convince officials, from preps to the pros, to stop playing the games. They debated the risk versus the reward and chose to keep playing in front of the paying public.

Credit Mt. Lebanon High School for following the advice of the Allegheny County Health Department and refusing to play its boys basketball state playoff game against Cheltenham, a move that essentially forced the PIAA to put students first and postpone all winter sports championships.

When Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for coronavirus covid-19 and a team doctor alerted officials just before tipoff against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday night, the NBA suspended its season. Suddenly, everyone started to realize just how serious this has become.

Still, the games went on.

When Nebraska coach Fred Hoiberg suffered through an illness on the bench in the Big Ten Tournament — and Huskers assistant coach Armon Gates nervously rubbed his hands with sanitizer while seated next to Hoiberg — we started to panic. (Hoiberg, who has a history of heart problems, was found to have the flu).

Yet the games continued.

Credit the Ivy League for canceling its conference tournament before it began, showing its smarts by taking the safest route. But the ACC tourney continued, as Pitt played two games. So did the Big East, which had to interrupt the Creighton-St. John’s quarterfinal game at halftime before canceling its tourney.

Eventually, all of the Power 5 conferences called off games. But it took the withdrawal of blue bloods Duke and Kansas for the NCAA to cancel its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.

That brings a whole new meaning to March Madness.

Tennessee coach Rick Barnes credited SEC commissioner Greg Sankey for doing “the absolute right thing,” given his players had no voice in the decision.

“We were counting on the people above us to make the right decision for the student-athletes, and I told our team that,” Barnes told ESPN. “We would honor them, trust them and there’s no question he made the right decision. …

“The fact is, if we had gone out to play today, we’d be really hoping that we were lucky that nothing would happen.”

Apparently, so was the NHL and MLB.

The Columbus Blue Jackets were willing to ignore Ohio governor Mike DeWine’s advisory not to play before large crowds for their scheduled game Thursday night against the Penguins until DeWine announced it was an order. Even then, the teams were willing to play in an empty arena.

Noting the league shares “so many facilities and locker rooms” with NBA teams, the NHL finally pressed “pause” on its season Thursday afternoon but reminded us its goal is to “resume play as soon as it is appropriate and prudent, so that we will be able to complete the season and award the Stanley Cup.”

Thank goodness for the NHL’s prudence.

What was it waiting for, Sidney Crosby to test positive?

Even though everyone else was canceling everything, the Pirates played the Toronto Blue Jays on Thursday afternoon before an announced crowd of 5,275 at LECOM Park in Bradenton, Fla. Finally, MLB suspended spring training games and delayed the start of the season by “at least two weeks.”

That was the least it could do.

During the telecast, AT&T Sportsnet aired an interview in which Pirates pitcher Chris Archer voiced his concerns about continuing to take risks by playing before crowds even after coronavirus cases were confirmed in Manatee County.

“The last thing we want to do is have one of the players get affected and then come into contact with somebody else,” Archer said. “It’s just suspended right now. Hopefully, they can continue because sports mean a lot to everybody, not just the players but to the fans and everybody.”

Yes, sports are a billion-dollar industry that line the pockets of everyone involved — including myself, who writes and talks about games for a living — but they don’t mean so much that we should be risking our health amid a pandemic.

If nothing else, we should have learned not to trust the people who have the honor of making the right decisions. Most proved unwilling to make them until their hands are forced.

Pirates pitcher Steven Brault was in the broadcast booth when the Archer interview aired, and the self-described goofball left-hander sounded like the voice of reason.

“You don’t want to stop baseball. We don’t want to stop playing baseball. We don’t want to be held up. But, at the same time, it’s just baseball,” Brault said. “The truth is, it’s not worth getting people sick. It’s not worth bringing thousands and thousands of people together and putting them in a situation where it’s much more likely that they’ll get it.

“Sometimes, life is more important than baseball. You have to put that in perspective. It is just a game, just a sport. If it has to be pushed back, it has to be pushed back, and we’ll start playing again when we can.”

That’s true of all sports. The games needn’t go on. Not now.

We need to be better prepared than leaders of the sports world showed, where they were just really hoping they would be lucky that nothing would happen.