Not that it matters, but here’s a column on the reaction of the sport’s world to this week’s events.
Every peace-loving soul had his or her heart broken on Tuesday.
As an afterthought, all sporting events nationwide were canceled for the day. As many of us wondered if there would even be a weekend, no one dared to tempt fate by thinking that far ahead.
As the nation took its first cautious steps outside of its collective bunker, as CNN’s name for these events changed from “Attack on America” to “America’s New War,” some people began once more to think of sports as consequential and necessary for the psyche of the country.
At some point in the first 24 to 48 hours after the attack, some people in charge of the sporting world apparently lost the capacity for logical thought.
President Bush has told the nation to get back to business. However, even he noted our work would not be “business as usual.” There’s an obvious difference between the day-to-day workings of America and the celebratory nature of sports, and by many, this was forgotten.
A few sports, led by baseball, immediately had the presence of mind to lay low. Word is that Bush spoke to his former colleague, comissioner Bud Selig, and urged him to resume baseball, but even the Oval Office could not sway the tug of reality.
Far too many players, perhaps chief amongst them, Mark McGwire, who blasted anyone who thought of sports in this time, did not feel like competing in a time America is to stand united. Far too many, like New York Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde, who wondered aloud about friends and neighbors, could waste their thoughts, emotions and time on a game.
Far too many administrators did not listen to them. For all the theorizing that had gone on about doing what’s right for the country and teaching terrorists a lesson, officials apparently forgot that if sports were to resume this weekend, human beings would have to go onto the field or the court and muster the will to compete and the drive to win.
Win what? A game? What does that matter?
The most visible figure on the thoughtless side of the ledger was influential SEC commissioner Roy Kramer, who broke with others in college football on Wednesday and declared the games in his conference must go on.
Never mind the players, in particular University of Tennessee football players, who would then be forced to travel 10 hours on a bus to go play what for some of them would be simultaneously the most important and irrelevant game of their lives at Florida. Never mind that what were meant as diversions for the country might not have even been televised on the broadcast networks, which had been showing round-the-clock news. Never mind the fans, who would be asked to cheer at a time so obviously inappropriate. Never mind cheerleaders, whose role would have been one of instant ignominy.
Other college conferences, such as ETSU’s Southern Conference, played sheep to Kramer’s pied piper. That is, until Thursday, when the NFL, correct to engage in as much deliberation on this issue as possible, finally postponed its Week 2 games.
Then, with egg on their faces, the college’s conferences acquiesced, including the Southern Conference, which postponed its weekend schedule in all sports.
Some have said that while playing games in New York, Washington and Pittsburgh, where the attacks were made and people are most acutely affected, would be impossible, the rest of America should resume its athletics.
Today, more than ever, there is no “rest of America.” We stand as one nation. To think of this as just a Northeastern event is the antithesis of the united front we wish to show the world. To symbolically fragment the nation would be a mistake.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think sports should stop for just anything. I opposed the cancellation of the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche games after the Columbine school shootings. The events of this week, however, are unequivocal to any this nation has seen. This is a highly special, and hopefully, unique, occasion.
As a nation, we’ll go and play when we feel like it. Right now, we want to cry.

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