The start of the college basketball season has used a powerful reminder that the world is still very much in the grips of a pandemic. Positive tests have racked up and multiple video games have actually been canceled every day, all while the powers that be continue to parade a group of unsettled college students city-to-city to keep the money rolling in. The players want to play and the games have been amazing, but it’s difficult to combat off simply how disturbing this season feels as the virus has actually claimed nearly as many lives as 9-11 every day in recent weeks.
If it feels unnerving to immerse yourself in this season as a fan, it needs to be even weirder to try to lead a group through it as a head coach. Georgia Tech‘s Josh Pastner had a concept about how to keep spirits high. It might be the most surreal moment of a season that seems like a bad dream.
Before Georgia Tech dealt with Nebraska on Wednesday, Pastner presented his group with a Covid piñata and informed them to smash it. Yes, the video of this is exactly as Lynchian as it sounds.
Candy spills out, the gamers commemorate, and the Yellow Jackets go on to beat the Cornhuskers, 75-64, to improve to 2-2 on the season. All of this is really occurring.
It’s worth discussing that Georgia Tech was having an extremely odd season even before Pastner brought a Covid piñata into presence. Leave it to Pastner to press the vibes to an illogical extreme.
Diehard college hoops fans have actually long noticed that Pastner is a bit an odd dude. Mike Rutherford of Card Chronicle once assembled a quiz pitting Pastner quotes vs. quotes from Michael Scott of The Office, which is one of the greatest blog posts ever written. Bringing a Covid piñata to the locker space to hype up the team sounds exactly like something Michael Scott would do.
It would be humorous if it wasn’t so deeply unfortunate that this virus continues to cause death and damage around the globe. College basketball has actually become a diversion from the problem we get up to every day. The professional athletes are our entertainment, putting not simply themselves at threat for the infection however also everyone they communicate with as they travel to new cities every week. The powers that be canceled March Insanity just as the infection was starting to spread throughout the country. Now it’s at its peak, but a combination of boredom, greed, and morbid resignation has actually led us to think the show must go on.
College basketball gamers get their ‘cost of participation’ stipend and the opportunity to take credit hours without paying the outrageous greater education costs the rest of us do. College basketball has been a dirty sport from really start of its existence, and now it’s never felt dirtier.
It’s the job of the coaches to keep their team focused through all of it so they might have the honor of winning something like the Bad Boy Mowers Crossover Classic. This week provided us 2,500 deaths each day and a coach who filled a virus piñata with candy. More death and more motivational techniques await us in the weeks ahead, at least till somebody has the good sense to finally question why we’re still doing this.
Pastner has to keep them focused, in some way.
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