School Spirit, Pride Lost in Needless Death

There’s nothing left for me to cheer. As much as I despised the hypocrisy of NCAA football and detested the poll-based awarding of championships, I always got a little charge out of watching my school, Northwestern, win a game.

The games don’t matter as much anymore. Not after a summer filled with football players keeling over, with Northwestern right in the middle.

I’m still going to Northwestern’s game at Nevada Las Vegas tonight, but only because the flight was non-refundable. I’ll be there as an observer, not a fan.

I’m beginning to wonder if the excitement will ever come back. During that magical Rose Bowl run of 1995, I remember sitting in a hotel room in Atlanta, waiting through the ticker on Headline News to go through its entire cycle again and again just to get updates on the Northwestern-Minnesota game.

Right after Northwestern beat Minnesota on a last-second touchdown pass last season, I was yelling at a fellow alumnus on the cell phone, while another hollered through the speakerphone. College sports can make you do those things.

One of the biggest myths going is that sportswriters don’t root. We root all the time. We root for a quick game, so we can make deadline. We root for a good story. We root for people who treat us well when we want to interview them.

Contrary to an even bigger misconception, that we like controversy because it sells newspapers, nothing boosts circulation like a winning hometown team.

But the only team I actually supported was Northwestern.

That was the only team logo I would wear in public. (The one exception was a knit hat with a Yankee logo I bought on the street in New York last December because my head was freezing.)

When I made travel arrangements to see Northwestern play UNLV in Las Vegas, I was excited. Fellow Northwestern grads from around the country were coming. It was going to be my first time sitting in the stands for a Northwestern game since I was a senior 10 years ago.

But any plans to wave the pompoms vanished when senior safety Rashidi Wheeler died from an asthma attack while running sprints during a supposedly “voluntary” workout Aug. 3.

I covered Wheeler’s funeral, and I have never approached an assignment with more dread.

I didn’t want to see tears shed for a 22-year-old.

I didn’t want to hear so many good things about a person I’d never get the chance to meet.

I’ve read so much about Northwestern’s team. I haven’t seen a word about running back Damien Anderson, who could be Heisman Trophy material, since the preview magazines hit the stands. I haven’t seen any analysis of today’s game, and what the Wildcats are going to have to do to stop Nevada Las Vegas quarterback Jason Thomas.

The only footage I’ve seen of any Wildcats on the field was clips of the videotape of that fatal workout, a tape that merely because it exists could violate an NCAA rule that forbids recording voluntary workouts for review by the coaching staff.

On the tape, players continue to run sprints even while Wheeler is staggering to the sideline, even as an ambulance siren wails in the background.

A player died preparing for this game and the ones that followed. How can it be worth it?

It’s not that Northwestern is the exception. Unfortunately, the school is one of many high schools and universities that have been hit by tragedy this summer.

But the thing is, it’s part of the bigger problem.

I knew better than to believe Northwestern was an island of purity amid the college football world. That was always the popular concept, that it was the innocent little private school that tried to do things the “right” way among the bullies of the Big Ten. To me, that was just a sorry attempt to justify ineptitude.

When I was there, the school newspaper reported that some players used steroids, and a few years after I left the point-shaving scandal involving football and basketball players burst into the open.

But now Northwestern is associated with a death that didn’t necessarily have to happen, at a practice that did not have to be held. It’s too difficult to toss that aside. When I see the uniforms, I’ll be thinking about the one that isn’t there: No. 30.

The blame game is headed for overtime. Wheeler’s family says his death is due to an unnecessarily difficult conditioning drill and inadequate preparation for an emergency. Others say Wheeler died because he ingested dangerous supplements that are banned by the NCAA, or that he didn’t take enough of his asthma medication.

I know there’s one group that can’t be blamed: the players in the Northwestern uniforms. So I want to see them do well. I hope they can still get some enjoyment from the sport, and draw some inspiration from the type of person Wheeler was.

But I don’t feel they represent me anymore. I don’t feel connected to them simply because of the N on their helmets.

I feel indifferent. The Wildcats could beat Nevada Las Vegas tonight, they could win the Big Ten, they could even win a national championship.

It wouldn’t bring Rashidi Wheeler back.

*

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com