There's no making sense of this terrible day
Published: 5/20/2011 1:03 AM
Last Modified: 5/20/2011 1:03 AM
I filed my story on the reaction to Austin Box's death a couple hours ago. Tried clearing my head by walking the dogs several more blocks than usual. Came home and give my kids a goodnight squeeze lasting several more minutes than usual.
Now, before bed, I'd really like to make some sense of today. I'd really like to write something halfway meaningful, or at least attempt some perspective.
But I can't. I'm a very long way from that.
Before today, the players I had covered in 13 years as a sportswriter had lost games, ligaments, eligibility and, occasionally, grandparents. That was the extent of their setbacks as I knew them.
Now I'm supposed to make sense of what happened to Austin Box? Five days after he went through Oklahoma's graduation ceremony? Three months before he was to start another season at middle linebacker, on the likely No. 1 team in America?
I wish I could. Then maybe things would seem halfway believable. They don't right now.
It's been 11 hours since I got the first call that something might be wrong in El Reno. I've interviewed players and coaches, football and otherwise, read police reports, scanned Twitter accounts, researched old stories and attended an impromptu press gathering. I've read stories from my newspaper and others.
It still seems unreal. I type "Austin" in the Google address bar, and "box dead" follows without provocation.
I showed up for Brent Venables' statement tonight thinking that might defog my mind. How many times had I gone to Venables the past 10 years seeking answers about his players? Hundreds? How many times had he provided them? Every single one? Sure seemed that way.
But then, how many times had I walked into the Red Room knowing the terms were going to be mostly football, and if I wasn't going to hear about football, I was going to get to know the football player. I was going to get to know someone like Austin Box, who I'd chatted with in that room throughout the past four years, and who I'd found to be personable, accommodating and easygoing despite his outbreak of injuries. If he had hard luck, he sure played it nice and easy with me and other media.
He'd walk in, sit down and answer questions until you were out of them.
It would have been nice to have Austin drop by again tonight. It would have felt comfortable, normal.
But it was late May. School was out. Players were gone. It was just Venables tonight, and when he walked in and spoke to the crowd of reporters all holding perfectly still and everything was so quiet but Venables' words and sniffs and deep breaths…
There wasn't much use making sense of it tonight. There isn't still. Maybe tomorrow or this weekend or next week.
All I know right now is it was a long and terrible day. And that Venables spoke for all of us when he said: "You can't plan for this. There's no blueprint for it. We just know that a young man was tragically taken from us today."
-- Guerin Emig
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
