Sports help ease the pain of hurricane victims

If you turned on any major news network over the past couple of weeks, you probably saw some… If you turned on any major news network over the past couple of weeks, you probably saw some fluffy analyst with a bunch of initials talking about how unprepared the nation was for the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. The talking heads compared everybody’s response to Sept. 11, 2001: “What did the Federal Emergency Management Agency do?” “What has the National Guard done better?”

Nobody has really talked about sports and how the world of athletics has responded to this tragedy as opposed to its reaction to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Nobody can forget the impact the terrorist attacks had on sports: Everything stopped; all games in every top league were postponed. In this way, the sports world mourned.

But not this time. When disaster struck the nation once more, executives made sure the sports world didn’t stop. This was absolutely the right move, and it shows they’ve learned their lesson.

Sports are the eternal problem solvers. What does a husband do when the wife’s yelling? He turns up the game. At awkward gatherings with the in-laws, you can put a game on. Suddenly the untimely demise of Auntie Margaret’s cat isn’t as central to the conversation.

Even when a hurricane ravages one of our major port cities, sports are still there to help us. Now some people are homeless, some have lost loved ones and some only feel the pressure of gas prices, the result of lost rigs and battered pipelines.

But everybody, no matter what his or her situation is, will ask where the New Orleans Saints are going to play. Sports give them something grounded; all of life is chaos, but standing tall above the floodwaters and the debris is a scoreboard. The board was turned off for a week after Sept. 11, 2001, but it’s still plugged in today.

Sports teams have responded the right way as well. Colleges have had to relocate, but you won’t hear them whining about it. Instead, they’ve uttered a “well, fiddlesticks” or two, and moved on. One of the biggest games of the young season, Louisiana State vs. Arizona State, was moved to Tempe, Ariz., in what was supposed to be LSU’s home opener.

The state of Texas has taken college athletics under its wing. Schools across the state have opened their doors not just for athletic facilities, but for academics as well. Beyond that, in Houston, the Astrodome has been playing Carpathia to the Superdome’s Titanic. And you said they were crazy to keep it after they built Enron!

On the professional level, the Saints have been nothing short of omnipresent at the shelters near New Orleans. Owner Tom Benson has helped. General Manager Mickey Loomis has been everywhere to lend a hand. Their show of goodwill, their desire to dirty their white collars, is nothing short of heroic. The growth of hair on Benson’s face is enough to show you they’re not doing it for the cameras.

And then there’s Joe Horn, who you’ll remember from such stunts as “the cell phone in the end zone.” Did that celebration make you think he was a jerk? Probably. Well, think again.

The last few times he’s been using that cell phone, he’s been calling teammates like Donte Stallworth and telling them, “We gotta ride.” Horn, Stallworth and a plethora of other players on the Saints have been in shelter after shelter, and they showed no signs of stopping until the start of the season forced them to turn their eyes back to football momentarily.

It’s a beautiful thing that they make the time to visit, and that the refugees see these men helping out gives the fan base an even stronger feeling of community. Survivor after survivor pleads of the Saints, “Win this one for us!” or “We’re all counting on you.”

It’s a pretty daunting task given the conditions the Saints are in right now. They live in a hotel near San Antonio with their families right now. They have to bus to the Alamodome to shower and use locker rooms. Then they have to bus to a local football field to practice. After that, they bus back to the Alamodome, undress, shower and then bus back “home Not what you’d call the ideal scenario.

The NFL is helping out in its own way. Take the Carolina Panthers, who offered 350 tickets to refugees. Doesn’t sound like much? Try getting just one ticket to a Steelers game.

The other major sports are also pitching in. Instead of cutting play for a week, they have instead become a vehicle for assistance. In nearly every broadcast this weekend, baseball or football, there have been commercials for United Way featuring not just athletes, but athletes from affected areas. And during games, announcers constantly make plugs as the Red Cross number graces the screen.

So, a big “thank you” to the executives who run the NFL, Major League Baseball, and the NCAA. Keeping the seasons going uninterrupted was absolutely the right thing to do.

With all this talk of bad response to the Katrina disaster, it’s good to see that somebody learned a lesson from Sept. 11, 2001

Brian Weaver is the assistant sports editor for The Pitt News. E-mail him at bweaves_pittnews@hotmail.com.