Games can be friends indeed to those in need

Once again sports is charged with helping to heal the wounds of the world.

Northern Illinois University's men's basketball team will play Western Michigan tonight in the NIU Convocation Center.

This will be the school's first home athletic event since Valentine's Day, when a gunman shot up a classroom, killing five students and himself.

I don't know how many fans normally attend an NIU basketball game or how many will tonight.

But this one will be available to whoever needs a couple of hours of escape from the memory of what occurred a couple of weeks ago.

Sports are important on college campuses. Just look at the expressions on the faces of the Cameron Crazies at a Duke game or the disappointed Memphis fans after Saturday night's loss to Tennessee.

At NIU tonight emotions will still be frayed and cheers a bit more subdued than usual.

A basketball game can't cure anybody or solve anything. It certainly can't raise the dead or erase the suffering of a victim's families and friends.

For a while, hopefully not forever, NIU will be unable to forget the horror of that day and recall the joy college should be.

All an athletic event can be at times like these is a halfway house between the two. A scheduled game played as scheduled can provide normalcy to an abnormal circumstance.

Throughout my career as a sports writer I have wavered on how much value to attach to sports.

When someone says an athletic event is the be-all, my suggestion is to grow up. When someone says sports are meaningless, my suggestion is to get in touch with your inner child.

Those of you who stop at this space regularly know I often refer to sports as something to care about that doesn't matter.

Living and dying with the Bears and Bulls and Blackhawks and our baseball teams -- or with NIU, Illinois, DePaul, Notre Dame or any other school's athletic programs -- isn't really living or dying.

It isn't putting food on your table or clothing your kids or maintaining your health or defending your country or electing a president.

Sports are simply sports … except maybe tonight at DeKalb when they become a frivolity with substance.

At times like this I always refer back to a couple of phone calls I received in the 1990s.

The first left a voice mail from a man who wanted to give me his candidate to replace fired Bears head coach Mike Ditka.

I returned the call. A woman answered. I asked for, well, let's call him Jack. She said she would get him.

"Hello," he said weakly.

"Oh, sorry, if I woke you?" I said.

"No," he said. "I'm not feeling well. I'm going in for brain surgery on Friday."

I gasped. A gentleman headed toward major surgery was concerned with the Bears.

The other call came from a woman upset that I criticized Michael Jordan. After scolding me she mentioned in passing that she needed a transplant and was waiting for a kidney.

Sports were friends indeed for those folks in need, shelters from the storm of life if you will.

That doesn't mean sports aren't way out of proportion compared to the real worries of the world.

But it does mean tonight's basketball game at NIU might matter more than most.

mimrem@dailyherald.com