I’d say it was the right call to cancel the UVA-Virginia Tech football game scheduled for this weekend, after hearing the details from someone who would know as to why the call was made.
Without going into what I was told there, I’ll say that football is a physical game, a mental game, and an emotional game, and if you’re not 100 percent committed in all three respects, the worst outcome isn’t losing a game – it’s getting somebody hurt, and maybe hurt bad.
The kids, no doubt, wanted to try to move forward, to try to do something in honor of their fallen brothers – Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry.
Their hearts were in the right place in that respect.
But then, when it comes to getting back on the job – lifting weights, running sprints, the rest – your head has to be in the right place to be able to do that.
There had been talk during the day on Monday about the game being moved back a week, to Saturday, Dec. 3, which would allow the UVA kids time to get back into their conditioning routines, get back to practicing football, then use next week to game plan, practice and play.
And while that made sense intellectually, that it could be done, there’s the emotional reality.
Think about how it is for any of us after the death of a loved one. You kind of run on fumes for the first few days, dealing with things like planning the family night, the funeral, sharing memories of good times as you put together photo albums and stories for the eulogy.
Reality doesn’t have time to sink in as you’re doing all of this, but it does when the funeral is over, and the rest of the world gets back to whatever it was doing before.
This is when the real grieving begins, and that’s the stage that 125 young men are at right now.
The idea that they could conjure up the attention to detail to get themselves in shape physically, mentally and emotionally to play a football game in 12 days would be asking a lot.
And honestly, a game would be a no-win for Virginia Tech’s kids, too. No doubt they’d want to win the game, but you don’t want to be the bad guys knowing what the guys on the other sideline are going through.
We can thank both schools for at least going through the motions of trying to get a game played, but it just wasn’t meant to be.
The UVA kids need to use this time to reconnect with families, get back home for Thanksgiving, and take it one day at a time for as long as it takes thereafter.
There will always be other football games.
The world won’t miss this one ending in a scoreless tie.
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Chris Graham
