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Keith Strudler: How To Be A Leader

Ivy League students are often thought of as the leaders of tomorrow. At least that’s the branding. Right now, they may be the leaders of today. Or at least their athletic directors, who collectively decided to become the first Division I athletic conference to cancel its college basketball tournament, a two-day event that determines which teams go to the NCAA Tournament. That means that eight teams – four women’s and four men’s – won’t have the opportunity to decide it on the court. Instead, the Princeton women and Yale men, both regular season champions, get the bid to the Tournament – assuming it still happens.

That decision hasn’t gone down so well with all the Ivy League players, many of whom have signed a petition against the cancellation, or at least the suddenness of the decision. They cite the amount of work and effort that led to this climactic event, the hypocrisy of cancelling this event but not other Ivy League competition – including sending wrestlers to the NCAA Championship, and the fact that all other athletic conferences are proceeding with their basketball events. It seems a compelling if perhaps myopic view of the situation, especially for a group of young adults who will likely assume significant leadership roles later in life.

Regardless of their angst, the tournament is off, a decision I think is both prudent and responsible – and that’s not just because Cornell isn’t in. Now to put this all in context, this is only the fifth year the Ivy League even had a tournament. Before that, the best team in the regular season simply got the bid – just like this year. And only four of the eight teams make the Ivy League event anyway. So the top four teams will simply share in the disappointment of the their less athletic counterparts.

No other league has gone as far as the Ivys – not yet. A few, including the Big West and the Mid-American Conference, will play without fans, reminiscent of college games played during a Measles outbreak of in the late 1980’s. The NCAA as an aggregate is considering how to handle its tournament, a three-week affair that goes from 68 teams to one champion in a series of packed arenas and stadiums nationwide, where fans come from wherever they are to wherever their team may be to congregate with up to 50,000 of their closest friends. If you were looking for an efficient way to spread a virus, there may be no better vehicle than March Madness. And the NBA is looking at what may happen in a landscape of empty arenas, despite LeBron James’ previous comments that he wouldn’t do it – yet another of the mega star’s ill-informed comments on global affairs. So while the Ivy League may lead the pack in ways other than SAT scores, I’m guessing we’re all going to end up in the same place eventually.

To be clear, I am not a doctor. At least not the kind of doctor that can handle any medical issue that requires more than Gatorade and a lollipop. But I am a reader, and I’m fairly decent at understanding source materials – one of the few benefits of a Ph.D. program. Right now, it seems we are in the throes of an emerging public health crisis with an uncertain trajectory. And the models we’ve seen from places like Italy paint a fairly bleak future cast. Which means that we should prepare for the reality that things could get a lot worse in a way that few of us could imagine.

To the extent that we can trust our public health officials – and I’m hopeful that they’ll move past the abomination of our President towards the real work of protecting the public – we have been told repeatedly that there are very few ways to slow down this runaway train. You got to wash your hands, keep your distance, and stop gathering in close proximity. And playing a basketball tournament that might seem really important right now is in complete defiance of that mandate.

Perhaps just as importantly, cancelling this and other basketball tournaments reminds us all that this is not business as usual, and it is time to make sacrifice. We’re not talking about World War II sacrifice, where young people signed up to die to save the world. We’re talking about skipping a basketball tournament and staying home, something most fans will decide to do anyway.

I don’t know if playing those games presented an existential threat. I do believe it was a great idea to cancel for reasons far beyond that. It showed us an example of perhaps the most overused but under practiced construct in the English language – leadership. And for these students of the Ivy League, it’s a lesson in what they should aspire to be.

Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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