Iowa State AD Jamie Pollard details decisions to cancel Big 12, NCAA Tournaments due to coronavirus

It had been a surreal and unprecedented two days.

They were the days that were supposed to be the culmination of the first year of a prestigious posting for Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard. As a member of the Division I men’s basketball committee, he would be part of the process that set the foundation — the bracket — for one of sport’s cultural touchstones, the NCAA Tournament.

Instead, Pollard, the rest of the 10-person committee and the NCAA found itself tasked with making decisions that could alter — for good or ill — the trajectory of a global pandemic of the novel coronavirus in deciding the fate of a tournament that would host potentially hundreds of thousands of fans in 14 cities across the country.

Information flooded the environment with new statistics, directives, decisions and guidance seemingly changing by the hour.

Those two days in Manhattan already had delivered some of the boldest decisions ever made by the NCAA. The third day — Thursday (March 13) — would surpass them all.

“You went to bed Wednesday night thinking, ‘We aren’t playing,’” Pollard said. "I remember thinking that. ‘We aren’t playing.’”

TUESDAY (March 10)

Pollard had been in Tulsa, Oklahoma, watching the Cyclones compete in the Big 12 Conference wrestling tournament before arriving in New York to hunker down with the selection committee to begin its process of seeding and bracketing the 68-team field of the NCAA Tournament.

The event generates the money that accounts for nearly the entirety of the NCAA’s $1.1 billion in annual revenue, according to USA Today Sports. 

Making his way through Manhattan from the airport, Pollard noticed the typically snarled New York traffic was considerably lighter. 

“But at that point,” Pollard said, “I wasn’t thinking that much about it.”

By the time he found himself at his hotel, though, the impact that the coronavirus was having on New York became increasingly apparent.

“When I walked into that hotel, it was like, ‘Where is everybody? This is weird,’” Pollard said. “And when the front desk clerk said thanks for not canceling, I said, 'What, people are canceling? She said, 'Everybody is canceling.' 

“That’s when it was just like, 'Wow, OK. I had just come from Tulsa 24 hours earlier and in Tulsa you didn’t think once about it.'"

The scope of the coronavirus outbreak was still unknown to some of the American public at that time. It was becoming more and more apparent, though, that the United States — particularly New York, Seattle and parts of California — may be facing considerable issues, including even holding events without fans in attendance.

“That night we went to dinner as a committee and as you walk through Times Square and to the restaurant, everybody was kind of talking about it,” Pollard said, “and when we were there with the CBS/Turner people (who broadcast the tournament), we actually talked about what would happen if there weren’t people (in the stands).

“It was kind of like OK, a surreal discussion, but you’re thinking, 'We’ll be OK.'”

WEDNESDAY (March 11)

That thought began to shift in a major way by the next morning.

“Tuesday night, I was more sensitized to the fact that Ames, Iowa, isn’t New York City,” Pollard said. “All these travelers are in New York City and this is a big deal, but I hadn’t totally connected that dot to the tournament until Wednesday.”

By mid-Wednesday morning, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, testified before Congress that he would advise the NBA to play games without fans in attendance to limit large social gatherings in confined spaces.

Later that day, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic, the Ivy League canceled all spring sports, multiple universities were moving to online-only classes and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine declared that no large-scale gatherings would be permitted in the state.

The NCAA tournament had two sites in Ohio — the First Four in Dayton and the first and second rounds in Cleveland.

“We were off the playbook really quick on Wednesday,” Pollard said, “and that’s when you started to go, ‘OK, this is going to be vastly different.’”

The NCAA wasn’t the only body reconsidering the fate of its tournament, however.

Conference tournaments across the country were either in progress or about to be shortly, like the Big 12, where Pollard’s Cyclones were set to tipoff at 6 p.m. central in the event’s first game at the Sprint Center in Kansas City.

Pollard had to be a virtual participant in the Big 12’s deliberations.

“(ISU faculty athletics representative) Tim Day was texting me a live update,” Pollard said. “Then (ISU president) Wendy (Wintersteen) called me to ask me a couple questions because of some of the things they were talking about. Then the Ivy League was the first to say, ‘We’re done.’

“That was all kind of taking place simultaneously on Wednesday. I’m sharing with the committee with what I’m hearing from Tim Day with what’s going on in the Big 12.”

Other members of the committee were also relaying what they were hearing on the ground from their respective conferences. The committee’s deliberations were being sent up the chain of command by NCAA senior vice president Dan Gavitt.

“Normally he would never be out of our room,” Pollard said, “but he’s in and out of our room all day long because he’s going out to talk to, I’m assuming, (NCAA president) Mark Emmert and the (NCAA) board. It was just really disjointed, so when I hear people say they should have done this or done that, what people don’t realize is there are 32 conferences and all those conferences have a commissioner and all those commissioners report to boards and they’re all in their own various states of figuring out what to do.”

By Wednesday afternoon, the information was enough for Pollard and the committee to recommend playing the NCAA tournament, which wasn’t set to begin for nearly a week, without fans in attendance.

“It was an NCAA board decision,” Pollard said, “but the committee had to give Danny Gavitt what our recommendation is. So we voted on it unanimously to go no fans.”

That left Pollard’s own conference, the Big 12, in a difficult position with its tournament set to begin in just hours.

“When we came to the conclusion on Wednesday afternoon that there’s no fans (for the NCAA Tournament),” Pollard said, “there were some in the Big 12 that thought we were from Mars because, in Kansas City, it isn’t an issue here. But they weren’t in New York City. 

“There were those levels of discussion of, ‘You’re not going to tell us from New York City what we’re doing in Kansas City or the Pac-12 or the SEC.’”

As tipoff loomed closer and the pressure of decisions made by Pollard’s committee, other academic and athletic institutions and the ominous warnings from the likes of Dr. Fauci, the Big 12 came to its own conclusion.

“Wendy called me and asked my opinion,” Pollard said. “I said if I was the Big 12, I would let fans come in Wednesday and then don't let fans come in Thursday because I knew what it would be like for the ticketing staff. If people show up at the arena, it’s just so much harder to turn them away than if you’re telling them don’t come."

So the Cyclones tipped off against Oklahoma State that evening with fans in the seats.

By the time ISU coach Steve Prohm began his postgame press conference just over two hours later, the entire sports landscape had shifted in a historic way.

An NBA player had tested positive for the coronavirus, and the league was suspending its season.

THURSDAY (March 12)

The NBA’s decision to halt its season was a turning point in the understanding of the severity of the situation facing not just the sports world, but the entire country.

If a multi-billion dollar league felt it necessary to immediately stop play with a positive test, it was clear how real the threat from coronavirus was. And by sheer numbers if an NBA player had contracted it, it was hard to fathom there wouldn’t be a participant — player, coach or staff — among the 68 NCAA tournament teams with the virus who would then be a candidate to spread the sickness.

By 12:30 p.m. ET, the basketball committee had voted unanimously to recommend the cancellation of the NCAA Tournament with a recommendation that all other sports be halted as well.

“We really only had say on basketball but there were several of us that said that we should use this opportunity to not let the other sports out there dangle because it will be a mess for all of us,” Pollard said. “During that time on Thursday, Iowa State had already announced we’re closed (for classes) until April 3.

“I remember saying to Danny Gavitt, the (NCAA) board has an opportunity now to fix a lot for all of us because if we just deal with basketball … it impacts all these sports differently and it will be easier if we can say, 'Be done with all the sport competitions, we’ll heal faster because then we can focus on what we need to focus on rather than talking about every single sport.’”

Hours later, the NCAA announced its decision to stop its winter and spring sports championships. 

“This isn’t about what we’re losing today, tomorrow or next week,” Pollard said. “We’ve got to think further than that. We’ve got this huge responsibility. Quite frankly, canceling that tournament, for the NCAA, for all institutions, you’re talking, depending on how things shake out with insurance, it could be three-quarters of a billion dollars that institutions aren’t going to get in distributions and the NCAA’s not going to be able to run future championships next year.

“It’s a lot of money, but it’s probably minuscule compared to what we’re talking about in our society, with stock markets and people losing jobs. We may look back in time that it was very symbolic that the NCAA and the NBA set in motion in the United States, but the economic impact of that decision, though huge in the moment, seems really small in totality.”

The severity and impact of the coronavirus across the globe has only grown since those decisions. Italy, France and Spain have all endured lockdowns. A number of states, including neighboring Illinois, have issued a shelter-in-place order to residents. 

“Social distancing” is now a ubiquitous term in this country.

Undoubtedly, though, the decision to cancel the NCAA tournament — a national pastime, multi-billion dollar industry and cultural phenomenon — acted as something of a sobering siren to the serious nature of the situation.

“My overriding feeling during that 24-to-36-hour period was this huge sense of responsibility that I didn’t know I really had,” Pollard said. “This notion that we’re in denial about how serious this is when you looked at those charts from Italy and China. 

"The basketball committee and the NBA had this responsibility of significance of really sending a message that we’ve got to take drastic measures. Drastic measures. That’s what I think back to.”