What else is there to do?

Sports have always served as a distraction from the world and its realities. However, no current circumstance could be more real to the football players of Nicholls State than the haunting images of southern Louisiana broadcast this past week. \nNicholls State is located in Thibodaux, La., a 60-minute ride from New Orleans. The towns they call home have been engulfed by Hurricane Katrina, consumed by the relentless water that has pounded the region and tested both life and land. \nBut give the Nicholls State players credit. They could have laid down and lost, but they didn't. For 55 minutes they left everything on the field because their best effort was all they had left to give. \nI could have written this column about so many other things. It could have been about opening day at "The Rock." It could have been about the Hoosiers starting 2-0 in back-to-back seasons for the first time since 1993-94. It could have been about the play of IU sophomore cornerback Tracy Porter. But none of those things matter when those poor boys from Thibodaux showed the Hoosiers just what having heart was all about. \n"I couldn't be prouder of these men and the way they played tonight," Nicholls State coach Jay Thomas said at the postgame press conference. "I think the way we played says a lot about the character of the team." \nCharacter can come from the most unexpected places sometimes. \nCharacter is what held a local resident of Hammond, La., together as he stood by his home. What was once a proud, towering log cabin now sat in front of him an enormous pile of wood chips. The man looked away, hiding tears from the MSNBC reporter and surveying once more the obliteration of a lifetime of work.\nWhen asked what he planned on doing next, the man shrugged his shoulders, smiled for the first time in the entire television interview. \n"Rebuild, I guess," he replied. "What else is there to do?" \nWhen terrorists attacked New York and Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001, there was an outpouring of love and loyalty. We had a sense of community. We stood as a united country, willing to use every finger on both of our hands to help those who needed healing. I was living in New Jersey at the time and I knew people who lost family members in the Twin Towers. Now another tragedy has come full circle in America: a disaster, which has not only tested our domestic capabilities, but also showed so vividly the segregated society we still live in today. \nTowns have been leveled, cities have been deserted, and an entire coastline of our country is helpless to the havoc wrought upon their lives.\nStill, Nicholls State gave one of the most shocking and inspiring performances against a university nearly four times its size. They showed heart. They showed character. \nSome people wonder how those players will be able to cope and move on after one of the deadliest hurricanes in modern American history had just taken place more than a week ago. Some people, like the MSNBC reporter, wonder what to do next. \nPlay football, I guess. What else is there to do?