Let time heal our nation first
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist
Much of college football will go on this weekend. The question is: Why?
The NFL says it isn't sure yet if it will cancel some games.
The wonder is: Why not?
At a time of national tragedy, when the enormity of the moment begs for some time to grieve and space to reflect, some schools and franchises say play on.
Even as the World Trade Center and the Pentagon smoldered yesterday and the search for the victims began, there are those who have basically said: "Are you ready for some football?"
The answer is: Of course we're not.
Tell me, how is it going to look on Saturday if the television networks cut away from the cheerleaders and pompoms and show the rescue workers still excavating bodies out of the rubble?
What does it say Sunday if fans with their faces painted in teams colors and cup of suds in hand mug for the camera while the latest casualty count crawls across the bottom of the TV screen?
How could anyone who has glimpsed this ghastly chapter of history unfold on television or looked at the grim photos in the newspaper need more than a nanosecond to decide that significant mourning and healing take precedence over a return to the games?
There is a point where the tragic events of the week demand more than token sensitivity before we return to amusing ourselves. And, that is where this country is this weekend.
You would have thought the decision makers in sports would have learned from the mistake the NFL made in 1963 when, two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, it played its games anyway.
Meaningless games that, as it turned out, a majority of the still-shocked population cared little about. Pete Rozelle, NFL Commissioner at the time, later admitted the decision to play on was the most regrettable one of his otherwise brilliant career.
Rozelle finally got it, the way that then-baseball commissioner Fay Vincent already had during the San Francisco earthquake of 1989. Vincent canceled World Series games saying, "our modest little sport of baseball" could wait for a suitable period of mourning.
Likewise, the Big East decreed a suspension of play that "allows us an appropriate period of reflection and mourning."
Yet, much of college football, including members of the Western Athletic Conference and the Big 12, have announced their intentions to play on. And the University of Hawai'i would have as well had the Warriors been able to get their travel squared away for a trip to Reno, Nev.
Clearly, there is no chapter in the book of etiquette about when to say when. It comes down to common sense and sensitivity. You pretty much have to go by the heart in a case like this.
That alone should dictate that it is too soon to resume the tomahawk chop and the wave.
