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War and basketball
Is 24/7 war coverage a good thing?
Your sense of perception is radically changed when you have a fever. Things get twisted and your sense of time gets skewed. That"s the way it was for me last week. After a winter where I stayed healthy through some of the worst weather in state history, the beginning of spring saw me catch one of the most debilitating flu bugs in my life. Aside from the most disgusting aspects of the bug - which I don"t need to go into - getting sick was kind of a blessing, because I got to experience things through the filter of a high fever. In between rounds of sleep, I turned the TV to Channel 8 on Friday, hoping to catch the IUPUI-Kentucky game. I"m enough of a gambler, and a believer in the underdog, that I thought IUPUI would shock the world and beat the "Cats. I woke up long enough to see the opening tip and the first few minutes of action. Kentucky was winning, but not exactly running away with it. IUPUI coach Ron Hunter had found a way to neutralize the run-and-gun offense of Kentucky. Things were looking up for the Jaguars. I passed out briefly. When I woke up, Dan Rather was narrating live pictures from Baghdad. Buildings were blowing up and thick smoke and fire were shooting out of them. While Rather is frequently incomprehensible in his commentary, I can definitively state that he makes perfect sense when you"re running a 101 degree fever. All of his verbal cliches ring true when you"re in delirium. For a second or two after I woke up, I had the basketball game and the war confused. I thought briefly that the only way IUPUI believed it could win was to blow up the arena, perhaps enlisting engineering students to build a bomb. As it turns out, the Jaguars would have needed military intervention to emerge victorious that day. Despite a valiant, hustling effort, they ended up losing a 30-point squeaker. There was no more basketball on my TV that afternoon; CBS, it turns out, had moved its games over to ESPN in order to give Rather maximum time to opine on the happenings in Iraq. Of course, the war news is much more important than a silly basketball tournament in the long run. But with only about 10 other channels pumping war news 24/7, it seems CBS could have stayed with basketball and let the other networks show the war. Especially now, when tensions are so high and emotions on edge, we need a distraction from all of this bad news. We don"t need more pictures of death and destruction; we need a break. Basketball is trivial, but it"s a sign of normalcy. In my delirium on Friday, I didn"t know the games were on ESPN. I thought they"d cancelled them all in respect to the soldiers overseas. I was not displeased by this; anything that would give IUPUI more time before being eliminated was fine with me. It was only later that night that I found out the unpleasant truth about IUPUI. Apparently Kentucky gained such a big lead on the Jaguars that the Wildcats started pulling some Harlem Globetrotters moves on them. I"m sure Hunter didn"t appreciate the bucket-of-water trick one bit. Aside from IU"s tournament victories over the years, Indiana teams haven"t had a whole lot of success in the Big Dance. Year after year, good Indiana teams get eliminated by schools like Gonzaga, Cleveland State or the East Oakland Girls" School. It"s shameful that our great institutions can be humbled by such lowly competition. And when they do progress in the tourney, they disgrace themselves like IU did last year. In what was perhaps the most poorly played game since my grade school intramural team last competed, IU put an entire nation to sleep in losing the championship game. This year, however, it looks like Butler may have broken the curse. They did what almost no one expected they could do and made it to the third round. Reality may kick in this week as they face tougher opponents. But they"ve already defied expectations by making it this far. When the tournament starts up again this week, I hope CBS shows some restraint and continues airing the games. Whether it"s good or bad news, people will find out about it eventually. Those of us who tune into the games do so because we don"t want to hear about the war for a few hours. I know people who"ve become so obsessed with war coverage that they haven"t done anything but watch CNN for the last week. That can"t be healthy. Sports and entertainment are needed now more than ever before. People will go crazy if we are fed bad news all of the time. I especially worry about the children who see this stuff on a regular basis. How scared and worried they must be about the war. I"m not suggesting the news not be reported; I"m just asking for some sense of proportion. Pre-empting Saturday morning cartoons to show the carnage of war is a bad idea. Let the kids keep their innocence as long as possible. It may not be possible, or desirable, to ignore the events in Iraq. But keeping a little emotional distance from the news is a good thing. If we become panicked, it plays into the hands of our enemies. So don"t feel guilty about wanting to escape the news for a few hours.
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