Times Like These
Sean McLean
Issue date: 4/19/07 Section: Sports
Everyday sports in America and in the world are a part of our cultures. We cherish it, we embrace it, we love the living crap out of it. We come home and watch it on television, we have parties to watch big games, we follow our teams in the newspaper, on the Internet and listen to them on the radio. We cannot go a single day without it. It's instilled in our brains, our minds and our souls. We love sports on an international level and we always will.
But with the power of one incident, one moment in time, sports become an afterthought. It becomes the last thing on our minds.
That was my thought on Monday when I heard about the shootings at Virginia Tech. It was the worst school shooting in American history, killing 33 people, including the gunman. The power of an unfortunate event like this makes many of our passions, like sports, irrelevant.
I came to this conclusion when I came to work on Monday night to work on the sports page. My mind was not on the daily stories in OSU sports, or any other sports for that matter. I could not focus on anything but watching the news on the shootings. That's all that mattered to me at the time, and I could barely finish my page for the day. I realized afterward that sports aren't a priority when people are getting killed for no reason and families are grieving a lost child. Nothing was a concern besides what was going on in Blacksburg, Virginia.
The shootings on Monday reminded me of 9/11 in that it had the absolute same effect for me. Back in the day, when I was in shape, I was beginning my short college cross country career and we had practice that day when the planes were high-jacked and flown into the World Trade Center in New York City. Somehow, we still had practice even with all the chaos going on, and it was a struggle. Running trails was not what I wanted to do, when being with your family on one of the worst days in American history was what was important.
I still remember turning on ESPN on Sept. 11 and finding no sports to watch. The stories of the day in sports were anything but sports. It was clearly the smartest move to make, as the anchors sat in their chairs and interviewed athletes who had games cancelled that day. September, of course, is when the pennant races in baseball are really heating up. But when being interviewed on that horrible day, it was the last thing they wanted to talk about. San Francisco Giants shortstop Rich Aurilia, who is originally from Brooklyn, N.Y., was concerned about his family and was ready to go home to be with them.
But with the power of one incident, one moment in time, sports become an afterthought. It becomes the last thing on our minds.
That was my thought on Monday when I heard about the shootings at Virginia Tech. It was the worst school shooting in American history, killing 33 people, including the gunman. The power of an unfortunate event like this makes many of our passions, like sports, irrelevant.
I came to this conclusion when I came to work on Monday night to work on the sports page. My mind was not on the daily stories in OSU sports, or any other sports for that matter. I could not focus on anything but watching the news on the shootings. That's all that mattered to me at the time, and I could barely finish my page for the day. I realized afterward that sports aren't a priority when people are getting killed for no reason and families are grieving a lost child. Nothing was a concern besides what was going on in Blacksburg, Virginia.
The shootings on Monday reminded me of 9/11 in that it had the absolute same effect for me. Back in the day, when I was in shape, I was beginning my short college cross country career and we had practice that day when the planes were high-jacked and flown into the World Trade Center in New York City. Somehow, we still had practice even with all the chaos going on, and it was a struggle. Running trails was not what I wanted to do, when being with your family on one of the worst days in American history was what was important.
I still remember turning on ESPN on Sept. 11 and finding no sports to watch. The stories of the day in sports were anything but sports. It was clearly the smartest move to make, as the anchors sat in their chairs and interviewed athletes who had games cancelled that day. September, of course, is when the pennant races in baseball are really heating up. But when being interviewed on that horrible day, it was the last thing they wanted to talk about. San Francisco Giants shortstop Rich Aurilia, who is originally from Brooklyn, N.Y., was concerned about his family and was ready to go home to be with them.
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