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Back to the game: How soon is too soon?

There's not a single doubt in my mind that the importance of sporting events in anyone's mind crumbled with the twin towers on Tuesday. Barry Bonds' chase for 70 and the Penn State game seem quite trivial in the wake of the terrorist attacks on America.

But at some point in time, the country will have to rouse itself from its state of shock, and the games will inevitably go on.

The question is when.

When have we mourned enough? When are we willing to embrace sport as a celebration of the human spirit or as a means of recovery? When will we be ready to care?

Saturday? Sunday? Next Saturday? Next Sunday?

The truth is, any time play resumes will be arbitrarily determined.

Cries of "too soon" will be accompanied by shouts of "too late."

One already can see the inevitable division within college sports.

The SEC, Big 10, Big 12, Mid-American, Conference USA, Mountain West and WAC decided on Tuesday to play conference and non-conference home games scheduled for the weekend.

The Big East, Pac-10 and ACC will not.

Not many will condemn those three conferences for ensuring that its stadiums and fields will not break the nation's "quiet, unyielding anger." Such a decision was expected from the Big East and ACC, who count schools around both New York and Washington as members and draw many students and student-athletes from those regions.

Many, however, will be up in arms over the decision of the other seven major conferences to continue on as if nothing happened.

Tempers will flare and fingers will point at those insensitive, me-first, money-grubbing heads of collegiate sports.

But those seven conferences chose to play their games not because they believe that normalcy will be in the air by this weekend. Instead, they hope that the football, soccer, volleyball and field hockey will lighten the grave atmosphere around college campuses and the nation at large, however briefly.

There will be prayer for dead before each game and celebration for the living during. But how will America react after?

The NFL faced a similar decision in 1963 after President John F. Kennedy was shot. Then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle decided it would lift the nation's spirits if Americans could tune in to their favorite football game the following Sunday, two days after the assassination.

He was wrong.

The country viewed the league's decision to play as a disrespectful and callous act. Rozelle never lived it down.

The seven conference commissioners hope their decision to play will not haunt them as it did Rozelle.

It shouldn't.

People are coping with this week's disaster in different ways because the impact varies, in part, according to geography. No one expects a Floridian to have the same reaction to the terrorist attacks as a New Yorker. No one expects a Tennessean to be touched as deeply by Tuesday's tragedy as a Washingtonian.

So let Florida play Tennesee if that's what they want. A New Yorker, a Washingtonian, or even someone from Charlottesville should not examine the SEC's decision through lenses colored by his or her own sympathies. The same should apply to the other six major conferences that chose to play.

Fans should not turn their backs on any team that will resume competition this weekend. Instead, we should recognize that they're doing what they feel will be best for those closest to them.

We should not criticize those who are hoping to soothe the emotional wound that was opened Tuesday.

We should instead recognize that the healing process will be a long one and end the pointless bickering over when the athletic world should awaken.

It is, after all, only sports.

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