Soon the obligatory Thanksgiving-based columns will roll out, the ones trumpeting the hidden greatness in sports, the ephemerality that delivers us from everyday monotony. We'll write about touchdowns and home runs, about superstars and coaches. Some might even make a joke or two. Might I suggest something about Kris Humphries? No? Maybe a Tim Tebow-related wisecrack will suffice.
Every year we write the same old mundane drawl. On Thanksgiving, let's be thankful for sports. Let's be thankful that we live in America. Let's be thankful for football on Thursdays and turkey on the table. Sports give us hope, something to root for that we observe as bigger than ourselves. And with that, let us bow our heads and say grace.
But when it comes down to it, the horrors and tragedy, especially in the past week, overshadow anything we could spin into a happy-go-lucky, mailed-in piece linking Thanksgiving to athletics. Perhaps it's snowballed, and we currently reside in the darkness that inevitably surfaces before the dawn. Lately, though, perpetual blackness seems to pervade the sports world, leaving us with plenty to be thankful for, but for all the wrong reasons.
Save the trivial — the NBA looks like it won't have a season; your favorite college football team got upset — this is not a good time to be a sports fan, to see how far the great ones can fall, to face the mortality of your idols perpendicular to Thanksgiving.
Longtime Syracuse associate coach Bernie Fine is facing allegations of molestation from two former ball boys. Though coach Jim Boeheim is vehemently defending his friend and coworker, the prospect for a fallout is too great to win over the public's trust. Signs currently point to the affirmative, which makes Boeheim's defense — and the majority of the Syracuse community's defense — all the more curious. The justice system will likely prove effective, but for now we are left to wait and see whether another nationally renowned program will be taken down by a desire to protect "one of its own."
Of course, that mentality appears to have taken down Penn State, where media attention has hardly relinquished Happy Valley. We've been constantly surrounded by stories of sexual assault in the shower, of failed morality. Images of Mike McQueary and Jerry Sandusky's interviews are everywhere. We cannot go one day without being reminded — please note: The constant reminder is good; it keeps the public on its toes and encourages more victims to come forward — of the fact that an assistant coach who worked with children and teenagers sexually abused many of them.
Tragedy struck Oklahoma State on Thursday when women's basketball coach Kurt Budke and assistant Miranda Serna were killed in a plane crash, just a decade after 10 members of the Cowboys' basketball program were killed in a plane crash in Colorado. Arkansas tight end Garrett Uekman passed away on Sunday as well.
Clearly these are tragic moments for the close communities of Arkansas and Oklahoma State, for the victims of Sandusky and Fine's alleged abuse. But what about for the casual sports fan, for the one distant enough to not get sucked in but certainly close enough to feel the pain?
The half-full glass would say we should be thankful that, say, more people aren't like Bernie Fine or Jerry Sandusky. But that's missing the point. Sport is a safe haven, a place where we go to escape reality and invest in something larger than the self. But when death and rape threaten to undermine that basic principle, everything bursts into flames. Suddenly we're forced to become something we don't want to be: We're forced to become real.
And we should be thankful for that — for events that put things into perspective. Happy Thanksgiving.
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Alex Prewitt is a senior majoring in English and religion. He can be reached on his blog at http://livefrommudville.blogspot.com or followed on Twitter at @Alex_Prewitt.
