There have been various stories over the years of teams that have been killed while travelling to events. What would a professional league do if this happened on the way to the championship game? Would they cancel the season and declare no winner? Would they let the team that lost the play-in round to compete? Would they declare the other team that won the play-in round an automatic victory?
I hope it never happens, but bad things can and do happen.
I would imagine that it would be a forfeit for the team that did not get killed.
That championship would certainly have an asterisk beside it.
In February 1961, en route to the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, the entire United States team was killed in a plane crash in Belgium. The event was canceled.
In baseball I assume they would just cancel the World Series. The Series was canceled in 1994 due to a strike.
I can’t imagine that they would hold a Series including the loser of the League Championship Series. That would just be macabre.
It’s happened in soccer a few times, most notably:
1949 the entire Torino team, save about 4 players, were wiped out in an airline crash. Torino at the time were the absolute dominant force in Italian football and well on their way to their fourth consecutive league title. A vast swathe of Italy’s best players were wiped out in moments. Torino were declared champions and the remaining four fixtures were played out by Torino’s youth team against their opponent’s youth teams.
In 1958 English champions Manchester United were decimated in another airline crash. 21 year-old Duncan Edwards, who despite his very short career, many recognize as one of the all-time greats in soccer, died shortly after as a result of his injuries. Though just about as many players survived as died, some survivors were left unable to play again and others took time to recover. One notable survivor was Bobby Charlton who is recognized as an all-time great and went onto win the European Cup with Manchester Utd and World Cup with England. Manchester Utd had to play out the rest of the season with a makeshift team including many youth and reserve team players. As a result their attempt to win the English league again collapsed and their attempt to dislodge Real Madrid from their dominance in the European Cup also failed.
MLB actually has a provision for a disaster draft should a team have multiple players die in an acicdent. I have no idea whether they’d use it if an accident happened at World Series time.
Obviously the World Series, or any other major professional championship in North America, would simply be cancelled and a disaster draft held to restock the franchise in preparation for the following season. It would be outrageous to summon the next team in line to step in. The fans wouldn’t stand for it.
If it happened midseason, as opposed to on the flight en route to the championship, there’s no doubt the league would try to play on, probably excusing that franchise from the remainder of the schedule.
Obviously the World Series, or any other major professional championship in North America, would simply be cancelled and a disaster draft held to restock the franchise in preparation for the following season. It would be outrageous to summon the next team in line to step in. The fans wouldn’t stand for it.
If it happened midseason, as opposed to on the flight en route to the championship, there’s no doubt the league would try to play on, probably excusing that franchise from the remainder of the schedule.
Super Bowl, World Series, they’d cancel it. If it was an LCS for example they’d probably make the surviving team the LC and maybe continue with the World Series. Public reaction would matter in that case.