Read chapter 44 here
Before the pandemic, I regularly used the ESPN app to check on the latest sports news. At this time of the year, I would have routinely checked the scores and standings of Major League Baseball. I’d occasionally study a box score or two, if for no other reason than to marvel at how many players’ names are unfamiliar to me. During the 1960s, I could recite the starting line-ups and pitching rotations of most teams. It’s been a long time, going back to the early 1970s, since I steeped myself so thoroughly in the game.
During the late summer and into the fall, the ‘NCAA Football’ and ‘NFL’ menu options are my primary destinations. Each Monday, I await the publication of the latest college football polls, primarily driven by an interest to see how the Wisconsin Badgers are faring. During an average Saturday, I probably check the scoreboard at least once an hour, always pleased to see an upset in progress. (Badgers excluded, of course.) Outside of the Green Bay Packers, pro football is not on my radar all that much. Watching bulked-up, overpaid professionals pound each other into eventual dementia isn’t my idea of fun. (Yes, there’s a faulty logic at work here.)
During the winter months, I focus on college basketball and ignore the NBA. In the latter case, not even the Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo can light a spark of interest for me. I enjoy the college game, mainly because the Badgers have been consistently competitive – as well as consistently underrated going back to the Dick Bennett era in the 1990s. During the past 4 years, JoAnna and I attend 7 to 8 games a season, as we share season tickets with friends. With college basketball, most days provide a feast of scores.
College basketball this season also provided the excitement of Wisconsin wining their final 8 games and, in the process, earning a share of the Big Ten title. As a result of their better match-ups with Michigan State and Maryland, Wisconsin was awarded the #1 seed in the Big 10 tournament. In a preseason ESPN poll, the Badgers were ranked 8th among the 14 league teams. See what I mean about being underrated?
On March 7, when the Badgers played their final game of the season, tournament excitement had already reached a white-heat intensity. The team was playing at the peak of its game, and their prospects for another Big 10 title looked good.
As the week progressed, however, concerns about the coronavirus threat loomed increasingly large. Will fans be allowed to watch games at the Bankers Life Fieldhouse? (No, according to a March 11th headline in the Wisconsin State Journal, the games will be played in an empty arena.)
Will there even be a Big 10 tourney? (No. Two days later, the NCAA announced that all division champions are cancelled.) And what about the NCAA? (The final nail was hammered into the Big Dance coffin on March 17.)
Shouldawouldacoulda. So began the laments over what was anticipated to be – expected to be, in some quarters -- a stellar post-season for the Badgers. Fans gained little solace when the ESPN announced that the Badgers had won a Basketball Power Index (BPI) simulated tournament.
My lack of name recognition continues through the winter sports seasons, the Badgers being the only exception to the rule. I think it has something with how the brain works as you age. For as many years as I’ve listen to Real Jazz on SIRIUS/XM, I still can’t name the artist and title of songs in heavy rotation without looking at the small digital display screen. When listening to the radio in my teens, I would have committed an artist and song to memory, mostly likely for life, the first time I heard it.
With college and pro sports teams on hiatus since March, I have no standings or rankings or box scores to pore over. As a replacement I’ve turned to Worldometer and the COVID Tracking Project to get my statistical fix. Based on the graphs and other data I’ve shared in previous letters, not to mention the Retiring Guy’s Digest virus marathon, I seem to be approaching the junkie stage.
You could say that Worldometer has become my substitute website for standings and rankings. The list of counties of the world is arranged by number of confirmed cases, highest to lowest, but all of the columns can be rearranged — lowest to highest, highest to lowest — with the click of a mouse on the up/down arrows. As a result, when Donald Trump makes an off-the-cuff, way off-the-mark statement — “the U.S. is strong in testing per capita” — I know exactly where to go to find the correct answer. We’re #180 -- near the bottom of a list of 215 countries. The one area where Trump and his administration are strongest is the peddling of coronavirus lies, misinformation, and happy talk.
In a way, Worldometer’s separate USA chart (screenshot below) takes the place of ESPN’s NCAA football and basketball websites, with team reports limited to state universities. How did Minnesota do today? Is Michigan starting to flatten the curve? Is Georgia doing more testing now that they’ve reopened their economy?
The COVID Tracking Project’s presentation is more like a box score. It also provide links to each state’s public health departments, which provide even more detailed analysis, particularly in the area of demographics. It’s the primary source of my “Week by week: COVID-19 cases in ______” series. What I’m seeing after 11 weeks in more than a few states is an increase in the number of weekly new cases. No flattening of the curve in other words. In today’s updates, all three states saw an increase: Alabama (29%), Florida (6%), and Georgia (13%), all three of their governors sprinting to reopen their economies.
Here’s one week of COVID-19 history as tabulated by the COVID Tracking Project. (The numbers go back to March 4, when the state confirmed its first case.)
I’m not the only one diving into the coronavirus statistics pool. Andy keeps track of Wisconsin’s numbers, focusing on Dane County, in a spiral-bound notebook. He has a particular interest in the percentage difference between positive and negative cases.
Read chapter 46 here
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