Mission accomplished

When you wake up and turn on the radio and hear that Bin Laden is dead, it's hard to manufacture the inspiration to write about sports stuff.

Topics that seemed momentous yesterday -- Cam Newton! Da'Quan Bowers! Justin Sarratt! -- seem totally insignificant as your mind tries to process the news.

I take great pride in the fact that I didn't watch one second of, or read one word about, the Royal Wedding. I take satisfaction in not knowing the latest on John and Kate Plus 8 or The Bachelor or whatever is the latest "reality" drama gripping the nation.

But as someone who makes his living from writing about games and the people who play, coach and administer them, I'd be a fool to be smug and superior on the topic of preoccupation with exercises that are trivial compared to life-and-death stuff.

It's common for us to call college football "big time" at places like Clemson, common for us to say it's a religion. But as fanatical and as passionate and as emotionally invested as hundreds of thousands of people can be about their teams, every now and then things get really real.

The folks in Tuscaloosa and other tornado-ravaged areas have seen that over the last week. Last night's news, and the swirl of emotion that follows, reinforces the fact that sports are just a diversion.

The diversion is a luxury for which we should be thankful, but it's a fragile luxury. The phenomenon of 80,000 fans making regular pilgrimages to stadiums can easily be upset by any number of seismic events.

Nut jobs could start trying to set off bombs at games. There could be an oil shortage that raises the cost of oil to 8 bucks a gallon. The economy could really tank.

God forbid any of this stuff happening, but the past decade has shown us the delicate and perilous balance between a great standard of living that allows us to be consumed with famous weddings and reality shows and football games, and a dark, dangerous world where reality takes on a whole new meaning and "survive and advance" is a phrase that's not limited to the NCAA Tournament.

Here's to all the people whose lives were directly and profoundly affected -- and ended -- by that wacko who was hiding out in Pakistan.

Here's to treasuring a country that's still able to devote its passions to fun and games. It could be a lot worse.

LW