Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione had an impromptu conference call with those who cover Oklahoma athletics late Thursday night.
It was so unexpected that the media was given a 15-minute heads up in an email before the call would start at 7:30. Like everything else going on right now in our world, it was a spontaneous call that offered insight, but left more questions than answers due to the sudden changes we saw in a matter of hours, not days.
During the middle of the call, a reporter started out his question with:
“Joe, how are you doing?”
His answer was brief, but his tone reflected a lot of what the world is dealing with right now:
This flat out sucks.
As journalists, we are trained to be prepared to deal with the unexpected. To work tirelessly to expect what’s to come so we aren’t hit with surprise. This, though, is like multiple tsunamis continuing to hit the sports world over and over and over and over again.
We work on a precise schedule that coincides with the sports teams that we cover. Those help us project numbers, project post totals and project how we will conduct our business. And that’s the worst part:
The coronavirus doesn’t care who you are, where you come from, what you believe in or where you are going, it just keeps coming for more and more and more.
Here at Sooners Wire, we decided once the news started to hit that we would strictly only write about how the coronavirus impacted Oklahoma athletics and the sports we cover. It didn’t lead to the most lucrative week, but it was something much bigger than sports.
Moving forward, we will continue to cover how the coronavirus is impacting Oklahoma sports, but we will also begin back to writing about your favorite players, teams and stories. We will get back to producing original content, previews, lists and now, nostalgic posts, as soon as we get them ready.
During this tough time in our country, our states, our cities and our communities, our audience will be a relief to us as we hope to be a relief to you. Sports are our outlet just as it is yours.
We’ll get past this and we’ll get past it together.