The Big Ten, ACC, SEC, Pac-12, And Big 12 Conference Tournaments Have Been Canceled

Wednesday marked a major shift point in the way sports leagues (and, generally, people) around the United States reacted to the COVID-19 outbreak. It began with the first major leagues and entities announcing plans to play games behind closed doors, starting with the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. It ended with the NBA suspending the season indefinitely after Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus — and we learned Thursday morning Donovan Mitchell had tested positive as well.

With the new understanding across sports that there was, at present, no real way of knowing whether the virus had reached other leagues like the NBA because testing has not been done at near a high enough level around the country, it seemed increasingly likely others would follow suit with suspending operations. The MLS was the first pro sports league to make that announcement on Thursday, but other major events quickly fell in line.

The Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Big 12, AAC, A-10, Pac-12, Conference USA, MAC and ACC tournaments all made announcements or were reportedly going to make announcements in the morning that they would be canceling their conference tournament games.

After starting their Thursday tournament action, the Big East finally made the decision to cancel, joining the rest at halftime of their first game of the day.

It is, ultimately, the right call and one would expect other conferences to make similar decisions in the coming hours. As conferences make these calls, one would also expect the NCAA to do the same for the NCAA Tournament, a decision they surely don’t want to have to make but may have no choice to at this point.