I sat across from Mark Emmert on Wednesday afternoon, just after he’d decided on the stopgap of removing fans from all NCAA Tournament games, and asked him why bother continuing at all. He answered without hesitation, about the once-in-a-lifetime dream he’d rob athletes of — not just basketball players, but also swimmers and wrestlers and golfers and lacrosse players and track athletes — and how much he didn’t want it to come to that.



As I try to recover from the whiplash of what just happened to all of us, I keep coming back to that answer — and to a choked-up Greg Sankey, to gutted coaches who had to tell their athletes their seasons were over — and thinking the same thing: The grownups desperately wanted to do right by the kids.



This won’t be a popular take, I realize. When things go badly, we want someone to blame for the failure, not laud someone for at least trying. We’ve all sat in the cynic’s chair.