I’m right there with you.

I, like you, also expected to spend dozens of hours watching college basketball this month. This is a football-first website, but admittedly, March Madness always has and always will get me excited in a way that perhaps no sporting event does. I started filling out a bracket when I was in elementary school, and I made it a yearly habit of fully immersing myself in all things college hoops every March. I build my entire schedule around the first 2 rounds, and I fight off tears during “One Shining Moment.”

So like I said, believe me when I say I’m right there with you. I’m bummed that the SEC Tournament was canceled because of coronavirus. Sure, it was my job to watch and write about the tournament, but I would have continued that 2-decade long tradition either way.

In this multi-billion dollar business, I never thought we’d see the day when it made sense for conference tournaments to be played in empty stadiums, much less cancel the games altogether.

Today was that day.

The SEC, like the rest of the conferences and leagues that canceled play, had no choice. As painful as it is to accept that reality, it is indeed, well, reality.

Some have not fully accepted this reality yet. There are some who are still under the impression that this is just a media-driven storyline to scare people who only have the flu. Really.

If you believe that “media members don’t want to work and made this all up,” well, do what you need to do to help you sleep at night. Ignore the fact that covering games is far better than learning about an unprecedented set of health circumstances at stake. Go live your life as normal during a global pandemic and pretend like everything is normal. Or you can acknowledge that even a top U.S. health official said that this is 10 times more lethal than the flu, and that these U.S. cases (now in the thousands) are going to continue to rise as testing becomes more readily available.

Nothing about this is normal. The lack of treatment for a virus that wasn’t being tested for is a different type of challenge. It’s the reason gathering tens of thousands of people in arenas to watch athletes play sports was simply not worth the risk, despite the economic issues it creates for locals and despite the uncertain predicament it creates for players and coaches.

And if you don’t believe me, a media member, take it from someone like Frank Martin or Rick Barnes. You know, people who have an income dependent on coaching basketball:

That’s the key here. The second a player was going to be diagnosed with coronavirus was when everything — who they came in contact with in the past, who they could come in contact with, etc. — was going to be put in question. Why wait for that to happen?

It took the NBA suspending its season following the Rudy Gobert positive test for that to truly sink in. Perhaps it was the news we got Thursday morning about star teammate Donovan Mitchell’s positive test for another reality to sink in. Like, even those guys aren’t immune to this?

You see, now is not the time for “coronavirus tough guys” like Gobert, who reportedly was “careless in the locker room touching other players and their belongings.” We’re past the point of pretending that this is just some sickness trend. It spreads too quickly to think that way.

I know that at the root of this decision from the SEC and other conferences was a question, and a pretty simple one: What are we saying if we risk the health of our student-athletes, coaches, assistants, fans, stadium employees and others who come into contact with them if we continue to operate like business as usual? That going directly against the wishes of state officials is fine in the name of big-revenue college athletics?

I make the “It Just Means More” jokes all the time, but this truly was something bigger than sports. Directly ignoring advice and turning a blind eye to possibly spreading of a pandemic didn’t make sense, even if only 1 person unknowingly carried the virus into each venue.

Better safe than sorry? Yeah. We’re talking about actual human beings here, not just characters on your TV.

So what’s next? And what will the SEC decide is right?

All we know for now is that the conference canceled all events through March. On the football side nationally, Michigan and Ohio State already came out and canceled their spring games. I imagine SEC teams won’t be far behind on that. Nothing about these next few weeks will be normal.

Sports are usually what we turn to during times like these. The average person looks forward to things like conference tournaments because they break up the monotony of everyday life. They give us peace of mind knowing that no matter what’s going on in our lives, we can escape into caring about a game. Some, myself included, were hoping that the SEC Tournament would serve as that escape.

That’s not going to be the case. At this point, it seems impossible that the NCAA Tournament will be played on its current schedule. Maybe we’ll get “May Madness” or we can figure out some other way to make this tournament happen without risking the health and safety of its attendees during such uncertain times.

Public health officials claimed that without proper action, the U.S. was at risk of following in the footsteps of Italy, where over 15,000 coronavirus cases (and counting) have been diagnosed. Conferences ultimately decided they didn’t want to play any part in pushing this country in the wrong direction just so we could have our college basketball how we like it. It would have been an awful precedent to watch the NBA, MLS, NHL, ATP and MLB suspend play for professional athletes while college conferences allowed amateurs to play.

Instead, the SEC recognized the need to act before more people were put at risk. One can accept that while also recognizing how frustrating it would be one of the 5 seniors in a locker room like Auburn’s, where just a couple days ago, the focus was all on avenging last year’s crushing Final Four loss. Reality changed, and it changed in a hurry.

In the beginning of the week, I rolled my eyes at the suggestion of USA Today columnist Dan Wolken that the NCAA Tournament needed to be canceled. I was right there with you on that. It was easier to act invincible than to accept that there was something major beginning to happen on U.S. soil.

But the more I learned about just how serious this matter is, the more I realized that sports needed to take a back seat to public health. I’m bummed, and I know you are, too.

My only wish is that you prioritize this issue like the SEC did — now is not the time to be spiteful.