Unlike Italy, where sports and public health officials have banned spectators from all stadiums during matches until April 15 due to a more serious outbreak of novel coronavirus, the Seattle Sounders will carry on with a 7 p.m. Saturday match at the Clink against the Columbus Crew, based on updated guidelines from Seattle and King County health officials.

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At the moment, quiet apprehension fills the Seattle sports scene. Football is over, and so is Washington's college basketball's home seasons. The Mariners are away at spring training. But high school winter sports are building to their annual climaxes. The Sounders opened their MLS season Sunday with a win at the Clink in front of a typical crowd of 40,126.

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Much has made of the Seattle Sounders' desire to be "a big club," meaning a well-regarded powerhouse elevating beyond MLS into global soccer's pantheon of consistent excellence. Winning two MLS Cups and playing in three of the past four was a good start.

However, losing Thursday at home in the opening round of CONCACAF Champions League to an underdog outfit traveling from Honduras was a crappy follow-through. So, failure Sunday in the MLS regular-season opener against Chicago was not an option.

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The Washington Huskies men's basketball team is last in the Pac-12 Conference for a good reason:

There isn't a 13th place.

The final home game of the regular season Friday night at Hec Ed hit the high point pre-game, saying good-bye to Sam Timmins and the other seniors. The temptation was strong to end things there. But Washington State did come all the way from Pullman. Wouldn't have looked looked good to call it off.

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Relative to the euphoria surrounding the Sounders when last they were seen publicly --  a November civic parade that followed the MLS Championship won in spectacular fashion on the home grounds -- Thursday and Friday held a heavy load of glumness.

Since the MLS season opener is noon Sunday against the Chicago Fire, Seattle has little time to ditch the pouty lower lip from Thursday night's clank at the Clink.

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Given the resources and intensity the NFL brings to its annual scouting combine in Indianapolis, it is remarkable how many whiffs occur in the draft. But hey, that's the beauty of we humans -- much as we seek order, calm and predictability, sometimes the chosen people don't do the voodoo like you want them to.

Which brings us to Jacob Eason.

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No greater example exists in NFL history for the thin margin between an 11-5 regular season record and 5-11 than the 2019 Seahawks. They were the second team in league annals to win 10 games by one score (eight points or less), tying the 1978 Houston Oilers.

Also tied, in knots, were the stomachs of Seahawks fans, astonished how mediocre a good team can be, and how delightful a mediocre can be, in course of a single season. Or in consecutive weeks. Or in consecutive plays.

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Preliminary congratulations are in order for the NFL and its players union. The sides apparently have agreed upon a new, 10-year collective bargaining agreement without public threats of a strike or other unseemly caterwauling. If you want to join the celebration, party favors should include a big, fat doobie.

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Considering they reached the second round of the playoffs with what amounted to a fifth-string tight end (Jacob Hollister) and fourth-string running back (Marshawn Lynch), the Seahawks have a whole lot of personnel business to tend to this off-season.

Which explains a bit of why they jumped a month ahead of the March 18 commencement of regular free agency Tuesday, announcing the signing of TE Greg Olsen, an oft-injured former Carolina Panthers star, to a one-year deal Tuesday worth $7 million, with $5.5 million guaranteed, according to ESPN.

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Baseball spring training is probably the most over-wrought annual occurrence on the national sports calendar. In part, that's because sportswriters traveling from lousy winter climates become deliriously rhapsodic when struck by warm sunshine in Arizona and Florida.

Their work strains to convey significance upon the daily developments, pushing back against the irresistible fact that the mammoth 162-game regular season will render moot nearly all trends or conclusions identified in February and March.

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Forty-four years ago as a rookie quarterback, Jim Zorn needed five games to get his first pro football win. Sunday as a rookie XFL coach, he was a winner in two games. The man is improving as a learner.

He learned then, and knows now, to beat Tampa Bay requires defense, not his offense.

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"What's puzzling you is the nature of my game."

-- Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil

What is the nature of the Astros' game?

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Responding to a decade-long decline in attendance and relevance in American sports, Major League Baseball apparently is considering for the 2022 season expanding its playoff format from 10 to 14 teams, and throwing in a time-tested selection gimmick from one of reality TV's more mind-numbing shows.

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In a season with no stakes, the Mariners made a why-not transaction Wednesday when they signed former No. 1 draft choice Taijuan Walker, 27, to a one-year contract, in case he has something left after Tommy John surgery in April 2018.

ESPN reported Walker will get $2 million on a one-year deal, with performance bonuses that could raise the total to $3 million. As spring training opened, he was added to the 40-man roster after RHP Austin Adams was put the 60-day injury list following knee surgery to repair a torn ACL.

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If Huskies fans thought an entire week of practice might help Washington pull out of one of more gruesome spirals in the history of UW men's hoops, they were wrong. They also were wrong if they believed Washington State (14-10, 5-6), even on its home court in Pullman, was mediocre enough to be vulnerable.

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Dark arts?

Somehow the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal has taken a trip down Diagon Alley into the world of Harry Potter.

The phrase from Hogwarts was borrowed by the Astros baseball-operations staff as a label in 2016 to describe an Excel spreadsheet program designed to out-smart the opposition by nefarious means.

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Marco Gonzales is not as imposing as Randy Johnson, nor as animated as Felix Hernandez. Nor is he a fluke like Paul Abbott, who had 17 of his 43 wins in an 11-year MLB career in one season (Seattle, 2001).

The one successful Mariners predecessor Gonzales seems to evoke is Jamie Moyer, projecting an earnestness that can bend silverware. A guy has to be earnest to be the winning pitcher, for Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins, in all four of his years in Colorado's state high school championship game.

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 Seattle's best annual sports party is back for the 85th time.

The MTR Western Sports Star of the Year, the longest-running event of its kind in the U.S.,  is Thursday at the Westin Hotel in downtown Seattle. The Seattle Sports Commission puts on a fast-paced evening of humor, poignance and video action to remember and celebrate who did what in 2019. Reception and silent auction begins at 5:30 p.m., dinner and program at 7:30.

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Observant Seahawks fans may have noticed a little something familiar in the Kansas City Chiefs' blistering comeback in the Super Bowl against the San Francisco 49ers Sunday night.

It looked a lot like what the Seahawks did to the 49ers in the the second half of the Dec. 29 game at the Clink.

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In the pantheon of Seahawks personnel screw-ups, none looms larger than the accidental loss of OG Steve Hutchinson to the Minnesota Vikings after Seattle made its first Super Bowl appearance following a 13-win regular season in 2005.

The episode was like cat-sitting Grandma's beloved favorite, Snugsabunch, and leaving the front door open a crack. Never to be seen again.

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