Sports are important, but...

When I first heard about what happened at Virginia Tech, I think my initial reactions were probably pretty common.

The feelings of shock and sadness were some of the strongest I have felt in my entire life. Part of me wondered what it was like to have a friend, or multiple friends, murdered on that day, and how I would have reacted. I also wondered what I would have done if I were confronted with that situation. Would I have tried to run away from the shooter, or would I have attempted to foil him, knowing it may have meant my death? Hopefully, I will never know for sure.

Being a journalist, my mind then wandered over to how the media was covering the event. Among my criticisms were the words used to describe the day. “Massacre” and “Slaughter” were two of the words used and those made me feel uncomfortable. For some reason, many networks and news organizations chose to over-dramatize the day’s events by using these sensationalistic and insensitive words. Isn’t “32 murdered at Virginia Tech” enough, I wondered?

Over the next couple of days following the shooting, I tried to escape the coverage as best I could. CNN.com and CHICAGOTRIBUNE.com were two sites I didn’t visit. I didn’t want to know the details too well, because, frankly, they were too disturbing for me. I didn’t want to think about the horror of the event. And if that kept me from being as well-informed as I could have been, so be it. Besides, much of the information found a way of trickling to me whether I wanted it to or not. I know that the e-mail system at Tech may be flawed and that the university was not locked down as it should have been.

To escape from what happened, I do what I do often. I went to ESPN.com and tried to read as much as I could about sports. On that Monday, I wondered aloud when would the first stories about Virginia Tech sports come out. And, of course, they came out that very day. Football coach Frank Beamer said it was a terrible day for the university, and his basketball counterpart, Seth Greenberg, said the same. My reaction to that was twofold. The first was: Duh. Of course they are going to say something like this. It would only have been newsworthy if one of them had come out and said something like “Gee, this wasn’t as bad as it sounds” or something like that.

But the second, and more serious, reaction I felt was that sports was being injected into a story where it didn’t belong, and I had seen this before. During the 2006 football season, the New Orleans Saints were being portrayed as an inspirational group uniting the entire Gulf region. Some said they were giving hope to the area. Whatever. All I know is that not too many of the people that were at those Saints games this season were from the 9th ward, people who lost everything. Saying the Saints were giving Gulf residents an escape is fine. But that’s all the Saints were doing. And if I remember correctly, they were not the best supported team before the hurricane. They were always one of the teams mentioned to take the vacant LA football market, and not stay in New Orleans.

Later in the week, ESPN and NBC made a big deal of Virginia Tech’s first baseball game since the tragedy. When I think of Virginia Tech athletics, I do not think of baseball first or even second. The school is lacking a baseball tradition so much that it has only one obscure player in the majors. Still, when the Hokies lost 11-9 to Miami on Friday, it was described as an evening that “began the healing process” and a “return to normalcy”. Sure. If that’s true, that’s great. However, I doubt that a team that is miles behind the football and basketball programs (in terms of popularity) at the school is really doing that.

I just don’t think that sports should be portrayed as this great healer in our society. Yes, they can provide great excitement and stimulate some of our deepest passions. But only for a couple hours. The real healing and return to a somewhat-normal life at Tech starts with each student dealing with the tragedy in their own way. And I'm betting it wasn't from some college baseball game like ESPN told us.