Anchor Drop, March 13, 2020: Sports Are Cancelled, Day 1

Good morning.

Yesterday was, in a way, almost surreal. Multiple conferences announced at basically the same time, and in reaction to no apparent news, that they would be cancelling their conference tournaments. The NBA had already announced, on Wednesday night (after Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus), that it would be suspending the season indefinitely. By Thursday afternoon, the NCAA had cancelled all of its winter and spring championships (including the College World Series in June), and MLB and NHL had suspended operations indefinitely. The PGA Tour tried to play the PLAYERS Championship without fans, but after one round, it, too, was cancelled. Basically, if it was a sport in the United States, it was cancelled.

(As some have pointed out, while the College World Series is cancelled, the SEC technically hasn’t cancelled the remainder of the season... but, why would you come back and play if there is no College World Series?)

The public pressure after the NBA got to be too much. Now, there are no sports. I mean, just look at ESPN’s upcoming schedule. There’s basically nothing live, and what is live is probably cancelled (looking at you, college baseball between Austin Peay and Tennessee Tech.)

Weirdly, though, my local CBS affiliate was still showing “broadcast partner of March Madness” commercials during the local news this morning.

But are there sports?

Yes, there are, if by “sports” you either mean “foreign sports” or “goofy shit that only parlagi knows or cares about.” This website is a good resource for international sports, and while it’s pretty grim internationally, there are some countries that haven’t been affected or at least haven’t cancelled stuff. Some countries, after all, have competent leadership that identified the problem months ago and took measures to contain the virus (hi, Germany) instead of treating it as a hoax. This is how FS2 is showing a Bundesliga match between Dusseldorf and Paderborn at 2:30 PM CT. Also, ESPN Deportes has a Liga MX match between Club Tijuana and Pachuca at 9:30 PM CT, and there’s also an Australian women’s soccer league match at 9:55 PM CT on ESPN+, between Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC.

Now, that’s generally the problem with international sports: actually finding them so that you can watch them is a problem.

So is Anchor of Gold going away?

No, you’re not going to get rid of us that easily. We’re brainstorming ideas to keep the site functioning without Vanderbilt sports to cover. At some point we’ll actually start writing previews for the presumed 2020 Vanderbilt football season, which starts September 5. But actually, you’d probably rather us shitpost than talk about Vanderbilt football, wouldn’t you?

Random Vanderbilt YouTube Game of the Day

Until sports come back (and we have no idea when that will be), we will substitute by finding a random old Vanderbilt game on YouTube and dropping it in here for you to enjoy.

TODAY’S GAME: VANDERBILT VS. TENNESSEE, 1989. A VERY GOOD AND ENTERTAINING GAME BETWEEN WATSON BROWN’S COMMODORES AND JOHNNY MAJORS’ VOLUNTEERS: