Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Football: Life and Death

I was excited ... to some degree ... when I found out that Columbus was going to have a football team returning this season. You see, Columbus has had two indoor football teams leave in recent years, and now there's a third team in town.

The Columbus Wardogs were an arenafootball2 team that became the Mississippi Headhunters. They never caught on in Columbus. Partly because they were bad. Partly because Columbus won't support a team.

Last year, the Chattahoochee Valley Vipers played, but were kicked out of the city for financial mismanagement.

Columbus isn't a pro sports town. And certainly not a pro football town.

Around here ... like most of Georgia and most of the South ... college football -- excuse me, College Football (capitalized, of course) -- is king.

Some say that College Football isn't life and death, it's much more important than that.

But Monday night, we found out that football ... even indoor football ... can be life and death.

Columbus does have an indoor football team: the Columbus Lions.

The Lions opened their WIFL season on the road against the Daytona Beach Thunder, a team the Vipers played in the AIFL (now AIFA) last year.

While the Lions won, the game wasn't important.

You see, during the game, a player died.

Javon Camon, apparently suffered a broken neck and died on the field during Monday night's game. Everything points to his death occuring on a "clean play" ... that is, not a cheap shot. It was on a play where he was blocked by the Lion's (and former Ft. Valley State and Columbus Hardaway High standout) Cedric Ware as Camon was trying to make a tackle. Current reports call it "an accident."

Football, whether on the playground, at high schools, on college campuses, on pro fields, or in arenas, is a violent sport. Deaths are very rare. But they happen. They're tragic.

No, football isn't as important as life and death.

But I wonder sometimes if life and death is as important as football is to some people.

2 comments:

  1. It must be the name. Columbus, OH doesn't support the NHL's Blue Jackets, either, but they are rabid about their Buckeyes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, and the deal for the Headhunters fell through for them to be in Pearl too. Only ten miles from my house. They wound up going to the Gulf Coast.

    ReplyDelete

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