ELItorial: Thoughts on a sportless Sunday

On Sun., Sept. 16, the four of us also spent several hours gathered in front of the TV. However, on this Sunday, the cool and reassuring tone of Brit Hume replaced the ceaselessly animated banter of John Madden, and the horrifying images of a forever-altered New York City skyline replaced the gratifying images of graceful touchdown runs. On this Sunday, the heroic efforts belonged not to the linebackers who made game saving tackles, but to New York's true giants, the firefighters who have worked tirelessly in their search for survivors and the volunteers who have given everything from their time to their blood to help their fellow citizens.

Just as if watching a football game, we sat transfixed before the television set, studying the conditions on our home turf but always awaiting updates of developing situations abroad. And much like watching a football game, we sat together. If anything positive can be taken from the devastation, it is that the American people have united under a common pretext of sympathy and support. It is only in the support of athletic endeavor that a similarly remarkable unification of the American public and the American spirit can be witnessed.

This tragedy has become, in a strange sense, a greatly subdued Super Bowl-type event, a community rallying without the celebration but with even greater national support. Thousands have flocked to the site where the World Trade Center once stood to offer their encouragement, if only through their presence in the crowd. And millions upon millions more have watched on television as our nation works to rebuild its largest city and its tarnished image.

The NFL made an appropriate and necessary decision in canceling its weekly schedule for the first time in its history. Football is designed to entertain, and Sun., Sept. 16, was certainly not a day for entertainment. Rather, it was a day for nationwide mourning and remembrance, for communal compassion and prayer. Football would only have diverted attention from the severity of the tragedy; it would have trivialized efforts to unite Americans in their suffering and sympathy. The NFL acted in both its own best interests and in the best interests of the nation with its weeklong moratorium. The league cannot, and should not, compete with what's currently on our country's main field.

This weekend, my roommates and I will undoubtedly resume our practice of wasting the day together in front of the TV, completely absorbed in football games. The games will carry far less meaning than they did prior to the events of this past week, but they will nonetheless bring the four of us together in our common room and millions of others together in living rooms across the country. On Sun., Sept. 16, 2001, no football was played, but we nonetheless joined in support of a uniquely American cause. If football is what we need to maintain this communal American spirit in the trying Sundays to come, then we should all gather in our own living rooms to celebrate the heroes of America's greatest game.

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