NCAA closes men's and women's basketball tournaments to fans due to coronavirus concerns
There appears to be an appreciation of the unique challenges that the NCAA tournament could pose from a public health standpoint -- with fans from one part of the country traveling to another, and then convening in close quarters.
The NCAA had, as of Tuesday morning, indicated that there would be no changes to its NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, even as the Ivy League cancelled its conference basketball tournaments before they began and Division III tournament games were played in empty arenas. By Tuesday night, the NCAA had warned that it would be making"decisions in the coming days" based on conversations with experts, including a COVID-19 advisory panel it created earlier this month. The organization did not immediately specify the nature of those decisions, though there had been speculation that games could be played without fans or tournament sites could be consolidated.
It's unclear how players, teams and TV viewers will react to the change. Will the eerie quiet of an empty arena negatively affect a TV broadcast, for example? Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College, certainly thinks so.
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