CECIL HURT: There is time for thanks

Talk about bad timing.

You’ve got a stretch of about two weeks in which various University of Alabama athletic teams have lost in competition with the following: Mississippi State, Samford, Arkansas State, Louisiana-Monroe and Belmont. If you are an Alabama fan, you’ve had frustrating losses and suspended players in several sports. You have an atmosphere of scrutiny that goes with the territory.

Compounding the scrutiny this week is the fact that there are people — some of whom are paid to work with the English language — who do not grasp that the proposition “is analogous to” differs from “is the same as.”

On top of all that athletic misfortune, you have actual tragedy — something totally different. You have a former Alabama football star involved in a devastating auto accident that has wiped out most of his family.

Then, in the middle of it all, there is a holiday. Thanksgiving.

Could it come at a worse time? After all, what in all that litany of woes — profound and superficial — is there to be thankful for?

Well, there is hope.

For Siran Stacy, who I’ve known for 20 years and who I visited with at length during a Gene Stallings golf tournament a couple of summers ago, that probably doesn’t seem like much in the wake of what has happened. But he does still have a daughter who needs him and a chance — with some help, probably — to carry on with life.

Other things are less important. Now, I am the last person in the world to say that the outcome of sporting events doesn’t matter. In a certain context — one that defines my professional world — it does matter. It matters for coaches and players. It matters to fans, and it should. And today, out of all days in the year, let’s be thankful that it does matter. Let’s be thankful that people who have time to fret over their sports teams have won the fight for basic survival. Let’s be thankful that the people who can read and worry about what is written have long since won the fight for basic literacy.

No one is less likely to preach a sermon than I am. No one hates sounding like a Hallmark card more than I do. My perspective has changed more than I ever thought it would in the past year (and I am extremely thankful that it has), but I still understand that my role is to analyze football and basketball games, not to tell people how to live.

So tomorrow, let’s all go back to worrying about just why Alabama’s football team has unraveled like a cheap sweater since losing to LSU. It’s worth pondering. One could even find life analogies in Alabama’s late-season struggles, if analogizing wasn’t such risky business around here.

Let’s all wonder if the Crimson Tide men’s basketball team is going to have another difficult season. Let’s wonder if the Crimson Tide women are going to have another very difficult season.

It’s great to care about those things. It’s great that so many people care about their team — Alabama or Stillman, Auburn or Mississippi State or the New Orleans Saints — and that the vast majority of those people have the proper perspective. They know just where athletics stand on the scale, without having to be told by me or by anyone at ESPN.

So, even though I rarely say it to the audience, I’m thankful for you.

Cecil Hurt is sports editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Reach him at cecil.hurt@tuscaloosanews.com or at 205-722-0225.