Are you up for another week of Alice Blue Jean and her Magic Banjo?

(Flintstones reference: Fred and Barney are about to watch a ‘fight’ on TV when announcer states it’s been blacked out for a 25-mile radius, so instead the station will present an alternative musical act. Fred responds by throwing object at TV screen.)

Or, we can see the replay of Georgia-Alabama for the 2017 national championship … nah, it’s probably going to end the same way.

What can be said here that hasn’t already been said? Unchartered waters. Unprecedented times. When are we going to get our sports back? What is a sports reporter to do?

There’s not much anyone in my position’s been able to do since March 11-13, the time period when one sporting event after another worldwide was postponed/cancelled/suspended due to something called a coronavirus. We can reflect on the good times past, we can reassess our priorities, we can keep hopes up that the next red-background update will be about life returning to business as usual.

Thank goodness for the Pot o’ Gold Pro-am and all the efforts of Bob Windom and Aaron Elrod to keep it going at Sunset Country Club that weekend.

Still.

Will there be any pro games on television? No, that’s where it all started, with an NBA player in Oklahoma City. Again, thank goodness for NFL free agency news to give the morning debate program stars something to get fired up over (what, no Lakers game to micro-analyze?).

How about college sports? No. We saw the Southeastern Conference men’s basketball tournament start with Georgia actually winning a game, then every school, conference and association shut things down all the way through baseball’s College World Series. As far as spring football practices, some schools already started, about half the SEC according to one list on SECSports.com. Another statement on that site says such activities as practice are suspended until April 15.

Maybe that’s something to anticipate. Kirby Smart was supposed to start his on March 17, but …

Florida State, in the ACC, was actually three days into spring football under a first-year head coach when everything – including practices – was wiped out by this particular league.

The Sun Belt, which includes Georgia Southern and Georgia State, isn’t going to do anything for a while either. Ditto for the Southern Conference (Mercer), the Atlantic Sun (Kennesaw St.) and the Gulf South (Valdosta State/West Georgia).

High school sports? Yep, that’s the lifeblood of this section. It all eerily began when two schools from Albany were not allowed to travel to the area air rifle competition held at Colquitt County High on March 12.

We want to report on the accomplishments of the Packers. We want to know about the YMCA gymnastics (also known as MGs) club and the Moss Farms Diving Tigers. But they were all told to stay home and do their own training work.

Another thing a lot of writers find themselves doing is making comparisons to other times when sports had to take a back seat to serious safety concerns. Major weather systems come and go leaving their damage behind. Yes, we have had to deal with quite a few cancellations and the rescheduling of Colquitt County High events just because an ominous-looking cell of rain, heavy wind we think may spawn into a tornado, and lightning is on its way. The hurricanes, well that’s on a whole different level with the evacuations and the strain on emergency resources.

And wasn’t there an issue of getting to Atlanta in December 2017?

When was the first time I found myself in a bind where a series of sporting events I depended on taking place to cover didn’t happen? Who remembers “The Storm of the Century” 1993? It happened, ironically, March 12. It was also called “The Great Blizzard” because of the snowfalls it caused in Georgia, Alabama and Florida. This took place on a Saturday, and after starting in the Gulf of Mexico it stretched so far north that even “Saturday Night Live” mentioned it during its broadcast.

For little Jesup, Ga., it was all about the wind. People in neighboring communities had their stories to tell of facility damage. But, as said earlier, it was here, moved its way up to Canada and was gone a few days later. All I could report on was how wintry winds called off games and did minimal damage to the local fields.

One other major reason why we didn’t have sports for a while occurred on Sept. 11, 2001. That was a Tuesday, and believe it or not some of the schools I covered while in Americus played softball games scheduled that day despite what we saw unfold in New York and our nation’s capitol. Those games weren’t at home, so I instead covered football practices continuing as planned.

It wasn’t until that Friday morning that the GHSA called off all football games for the weekend. The story went that so many schools were making their own decisions not to play that the main office went ahead with a statewide postponement. The result was an extra week of the regular season, which pushed all playoff rounds ahead one week.

Due to the events of 9-11, everyone said the world was changing. The world changed about a decade earlier with the start of tensions in the Persian Gulf. Pearl Harbor. You see where I’m going with this.

This COVID-19 was serious enough to bring forth the idea of playing games in empty arenas, golf tournaments without spectators and stock car races sans the crowds. The point I wanted to make in the story about Colquitt County High games being under suspension is that mental tug-of-war, the one where you want to do what’s best for public safety but you also want to see what these young student-athletes could accomplish after already getting several weeks into these spring seasons.

No, I can’t stand the fact that we can’t see the Packers in action against their region foes and other great rivals. I accept that I am powerless to change our world’s circumstances except to pray to God for everyone’s well-being, for those in the medical field and those having to make these tough choices.