COLUMBUS, Ohio – While a lot of the focus with the cancellation of sports revolves around the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament there are plenty of other athletes that saw their seasons come to an end with the plug being pulled on spring sports and for seniors and players in their final year of eligibility, that marked the end of their collegiate careers and in many cases, athletic careers with few professional options to be had.

Credit goes to the NCAA for recognizing this issue and stepping in, or at least making the correct motions for stepping in and signaling that there will be relief given to all that are losing this year of eligibility due to the COVID-19 outbreak that has gripped the entire world.

On a conference call with the local media on Friday afternoon, Ohio State Director of Athletics, Gene Smith, spoke about this move, a move that will touch more than two-dozen sports that fall under the umbrella of spring sports.

“The NCAA Coordinating Council is already starting to work on that,” Smith said. “They understand that this is something that we should try and do.”

It is not as simple as telling programs to go ahead and make it happen. There are plenty of issues that have to be sorted out as schools already have incoming freshmen set to join these teams in the summer with scholarship counts already accounted for. Throw into that the whole conversation of where scholarships are coming from, even with split scholarships in many non-revenue sports. These are all issues that have to be addressed and figured out and something that can be replicated from the biggest athletic programs like Ohio State down to the smallest members of Division-I.

“Looking at financial aid, roster sizes all those types of things, time of year, your spring sports are not a two-semester sport they are a one-semester sport, what does that mean?” Smith added. “Some other sports, some were one-third into their season or one-half into their season, what does that mean? Financial impact on the institutions, scholarship exemptions, even your freshmen who redshirted, what does that mean to them? A number of different things to consider.”

Obviously, this is a time of great uncertainty and answers are hard to come by as people are not sure what tomorrow or the next day are going to look like, let alone months and months down the line.

This is going to take some time. There is the need to sort some things out just for operational purposes, but nothing is going to be rushed just to be rushed, especially with so much unknown on the horizon.

“We have not talked about that as a team, that is just off the top of my head,” Smith said. “Student athletes need to know one way or the other and coaches need to be part of that process so they can ultimately plan relative to recruiting and roster management.”

What about winter sports? Most of those sports made it through their entire regular season and were in the stages of crowning league and national champions. Both the Ohio State men’s and women’s basketball teams were set to make their respective NCAA Tournaments, the women’s hockey team was already in the national tournament while the men’s hockey team was in the later stages of the Big Ten Tournament. The wrestling team had already gone through the Big Tens and there were individuals set to make run at national titles.

Where do they stand in this? Even more questions that need to be addressed.

“I have not looked at the winter sports, my assumption is just off the top of my head is that I would be supportive of that as well,” Smith said. “That is an exercise that I have to do, I have to go through that. I would think that winter sports, I would feel the same way.”