Northern Illinois, VT Tragedies - Why Do We Turn to Sports?

ESPN.com currently has an article featured that quotes the Athletic Director at NIU as saying "We're going to get stronger." That offended me, of course, because they just as easily could have written the headline "Indiana AD: 'We're going to get stronger'" and I wouldn't have even blinked. Luckily, the article itself discusses how NIU and the athletic department implemented its emergency plan, one that was created in the wake of last spring's VT shootings, in order to attempt to protect the students and student-athletes.

I was pleased to read that an NIU offensive lineman helped a student to safety, but the university did not hyperbolize the player's efforts, saying the student had been hit by some shotgun pellets, but was not seriously injured. Often in the aftermath of these cases we read of amazing heroes (I'm thinking Jessica Lynch in Iraq), only to learn that the story has been turned into a propaganda piece. In this case, I guess it would have been a recruiting and image piece. The university did the honorable thing and reported the facts.

The question that came to mind immediately is: Why do we automatically turn to sports when these campus tragedies strike? The answer came to me quickly. That's all we know about most schools across the country. Set aside the Ivy League, Stanford, Duke and some others and if you ask someone in Colorado to tell you one thing about the University of Maryland and they'll probably have something to say about basketball or football. Most people can't tell you about Maryland's excellent academic rankings, especially in journalism, engineering and computer science.

All I know about NIU is that they used to have Michael "The Burner" Turner, and you don't want to schedule your season opener on the road there. A little research tells me that NIU also has produced Ryan Diem, Sam Hurd, Hollis Thomas and Justin McCareins, all solid NFL players. I have to look hard to see that the school also lists as alumni former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, actors Dan Castellaneta (The Simpsons/Tracy Ullman), brothers Steve (The Practice) and Wood Harris (Avon on The Wire), producer Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future and a billion other movies you love) and Smashing Pumpkins' main drummer Jimmy Chamberlain (arguably their Yoko, but we'll count him nonetheless).

spacer

So, while it is offensive to see the NIU and VT tragedies boiled down to jersey patches and football handicapping, you almost have to forgive the media for quickly turning that direction. They recognize that these schools are colors and jerseys to most of America, and that's the quickest way they know to humanize it. It's no different from how they turned the focus of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the Saints 2006 run instead of continually highlighting that very little, if anything, had changed in the city (Anderson Cooper aside and much thanks to him). It's definitely much easier than trying to figure out how to prevent disturbed post-adolescents from hurting their classmates or how to rebuild a major city.

If you still have mixed feelings about immediately linking sports to the VT and NIU tragedies, consider this: Rank the following factors in order from most important to least important to explain why the VT tragedy captured the nation's attention for weeks and the similar NIU tragedy has barely registered a blip:

1) Recency of VT tragedy

2) Identity and appearance of the gunman

3) Number of fatalities

4) Desensitization to school shootings

5) Presidential election distraction

6) National familiarity with the school due to athletic achievements

I think most reasonable people would accept that 6) is the biggest factor.