Michigan Basketball cancellation is sign that COVID is here to stay

Unfortunately, the college and professional sports world is in flux right now. If you haven’t heard by now, Michigan basketball’s game was canceled against PFW yesterday because of COVID issues within their program.

It was silly to think that with outbreaks everywhere last season (for all sports, college, and professional) that this virus would just miraculously go away.

Nope, as everyone can see, this COVID issue is not going away anytime soon, and will probably be around for at least the next year or more.

It’s crazy that we are two years into this thing, and the virus is still around, mutating, and still affecting people all over the country. I mean look at how it has affected sports nationally already:

And this:

And lastly, this:

Obviously, everyone wants this virus to be over with, but right now, that doesn’t seem realistic. All we as fans can do is hope and pray that Michigan’s athletic department isn’t completely ravaged by COVID this year like last year.

The good thing is, over 90% of the athletic department is safely vaccinated, so if something were to happen (knock on wood), the potential stoppage in play wouldn’t nearly be as long as last season.

Last year, when the women’s and men’s basketball teams were riddled by COVID, I think they were shut down for approximately four weeks.

This time off thankfully didn’t affect Michigan’s ability to perform (at least on the men’s side) but still, there’s always that mental aspect to an athlete that comes with being away from their scholarship sport for an extended period of time and fear of the unknown.

All of this is because the athletes are vaccinated, and because they are vaccinated, have less stringent protocols they have to follow.

Plus, last year, nobody knew what to expect or how to handle the situation. This year though, lessons were learned, much more data is available, and shots are available and still available (including the booster).

Honestly, we should’ve expected COVID to impact Michigan athletics, even if minimally or indirectly. We didn’t really take that into consideration during the off-season records and stats predictions.

Anyways, the point is, this virus is probably here to stay at least for another year, if not more, and breakthrough cases are happening every single day, so it was practically inevitable that Michigan would somehow be impacted by this.

Not every athletic department is as stringent as Michigan in following protocols and staying safe, so there’s that positive thought, but there’s also the opposite, and Michigan can do everything right but still have games called off because of things it can’t control.

All in all, expect at least a few more game-day postponements or cancellations within Michigan’s athletic department with their opponents in the future.