If you will allow me a quick detour before we get to the fortunes of UVa football …

I am sure that Kris Wright would have liked to have had this article from me a week ago. After all, an article that discusses UVa’s football spring is most timely right after that spring wraps up. And yet, I simply have been unable to write a thing until now. Last week was a difficult week in my life on many fronts, but it all pales in comparison to what happened on the campus of Virginia Tech on April 16th.

I had planned to start this article that evening. Never happened. I decided to get to it the next night. Then the next. Then the next. Didn’t happen. Each time I sat down in my office, the noise of the world gone, my mind would wander. Instead of breaking down the football team, I would find myself trying to understand how such a horrific thing could happen. Instead of typing, I would find myself stopping to pray for those lost and those affected.

But slowly, a post here, a post there, my interest in talking about football started to creep back. So I sat down and started to type. Again, football became my escape. That has happened before in my life on several occasions. After I lost a loved one on 9/11, for example, my faith, my family, and my football were without a doubt the three things that got me through. And I was not alone, as I remember the way America used sporting events to gather, to remember and to forget, to heal.

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