Daily Dose: Feb. 27 - Part II: Discussion

Everyone has such a different way of dealing with tragedy and/or the death of a friend, acquaintance, family member, lover, fellow student or worker. For some, they cannot fathom doing anything but being sad and remembering and letting that play out its course. For others, all emotion is pushed to the back of their minds until months later something else forces them to confront their feelings and they break down. Some people can find the balance that is life. Grief is still present, and will be for a long time, however life still goes on. Is sport a distraction or just a part of life, especially on a college campus? It moves people to continue their life, whether it is a distraction OR what they would normally do. Whatever helps a person to move through the process of living through a tragedy in their lives is a worthwhile endeavor.

I think there's a tendency in media these days to want to attach universal significance to everything we can, even when little exists. As a sports writer in ACC country, it struck me last football season how much contrived emotion was injected into Virginia Tech's football season because of the campus massacre that occurred there the previous spring. This is meant in no way to minimize the tragedy or the sorrow felt by those who knew the victims well. In fact, their pain should be acknowledged and told in stories that have ZERO to do with sports. Instead, the easy route was to stamp everything with a simple-to-say and easy-to-market moniker -- "We will prevail!" -- and then act as if six Saturdays of football on campus were going to show the power of the human spirit and the bond of a campus. It was all very forced. There were no football players involved in the VT shootings. They just simply happened to play on the campus where this happened. And yet they were sort of propped up as the vehicle for healing for all those in Blacksburg, Va., when football and a gruesome campus shooting had little do with each other. My conclusion: as media members, we must resist the temptation to create some deeper meaning out of sports unless it is truly there. In the case of NIU specifically, I'm not sure sports has ever been a deeply unifying force. And to think that this recent tragedy was somehow going to get a campus to rally around a below average MAC basketball team is silly. They had nothing to do with each other. Sorry for being so long-winded. It is a worthwhile discussion.

Great stuff already guys...
I read five stories this morning - the 2 Chicago metro's, 2 suburban papers and ESPN.com...
I think something like this deserves mass consumption, and I chose to look at all of it as one package.
I'm not here to say what was good or bad, that's up to you all, but I do think that my colleagues got it.
Dan shared his thoughts about the Va. Tech shooting, and how the media forced the issue on us - I think the Chicago-area scribes saw that. There was a collective tone, and one different from past "the first game after..." stories I've read. It seemed that we all realized that it's not this monumental event.

I haven't read everything out there, but I agree that the Chicago writers didn't go overboard. I've been tired of the media telling me how to feel, but I don't think that happened here.

I'm also wondering how much winning has to do with this topic, and how it plays into the way people perceive sport's importance after tragedy. What if the NIU men's team was 24-5 and on the verge of the NCAA Tournament? What if this was football season? Would the reaction on campus be different? The men's team hasn't drawn well all year, so I wonder if in this case, apathy equals normalcy...

If only a few hundred were interested in a 6-17 team before the tragedy, it makes sense that only a few hundred would be interested in a 6-17 team afterwards. Part of "getting back to normal" is doing the things you would "normally" do. Going to a game you never would have cared about before such a traumatic event would only serve as a reminder that things are not, in fact, "normal."

As an NIU student who did not feel compelled to attend the game (nor has ever felt compelled to attend a basketball game), I believe that the game coverage was on target. I enjoyed your column, and believe that some of the other papers got it right, also.
For the sake of discussion, I will say that I think that if it were football season, we would have seen an increase in attendance, and it will be interesting to see if that is still true come Fall. The reason I think this could happen is that I believe that NIU football is a sport that already, normally functions to bring NIU students and alumni together. I believe that students and alumni who have been searching for ways to come together (or for alumni to come "home") will utilize next season's football games for that purpose b/c this is a familiar way of doing so for them. For now, though, I think that each student will continue to use thier usual means of coming together. For some, that is sports. For others, it can look very different. For my friends and colleagues, it has been lots of delicious meals together.

That's interesting - that the football home opener in the fall may provide more of an escape, many months after the fact. I'm glad to hear from someone on campus and I'm glad for us (the media) that we didn't screw it up...