Charles Barkley believes the 2020 NCAA Tournament should not be played: ‘Turner Sports and CBS got to close down March Madness’
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While he understands his employer isn’t going to be happy with his comments, Charles Barkley believes the 2020 NCAA Tournament has to be shut down.
The NBA and NCAA Tournament analyst was emphatic in his belief that the upcoming tournament needed to be shut down during his Thursday appearance on ESPN morning show “Get Up.”
“I’m going to say this and I’m probably going to get in trouble, because I work for Turner and March Madness on CBS, I think Turner Sports and CBS got to close down March Madness,” Barkley said on the show. “You can’t have these players, even if there’s no fans in the stadium, you can’t have these players breathing on each other for two weeks. Even if they got a hotel, they are going to be in different cities around the country.
“I hate to say it, like I said, I probably shouldn’t say it because I work for CBS, I think we are going to have to shut down March Madness until we know more.”
When asked to respond to the players that are willing to take the risk and participate in perhaps their only opportunity to appear in the NCAA Tournament, Barkley expressed that the bigger picture has to be taken into consideration.
“I think my company has got to bite the bullet,” Barkley responded. “I know the kids want to play but we can’t have these kids — think about it Greeny, these kids are sweating, breathing, leaning on each other, I mean, that’s crazy! Even if they lose, you go back home you don’t know if you got the virus for a week or two.”
How would schools handle the potential of lost revenue in the event that the tournament is canceled? Barkley says CBS and Turner Sports should honor their contracts and pay up.
“But the problem is going to be we pay a billion dollars for March Madness. I think the right thing to do is for us to honor our contract, listen, if they play these games, it’s really just about they want that billion-dollar check, let’s be realistic,” Barkley commented. “I think we got to say, ‘You know what, everybody has made a lot of money, we going to have to bite the bullet.’
“That billion dollars pays for a lot of sports, I think we going to have to bite the bullet and say, ‘You know what, these kids been good to us forever, let’s pay the NCAA their billions of dollars, a billion dollars, because that’s what we pay for March Madness because that pays for all the other programs at these schools, but we can’t have these kids out there running and breathing on each other for three weeks.”
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
