This is Rick Reily's column in this week's Sports Illustrated. He is the
> feature columnist on the last page. This may make you proud to be a Tiger.
>
> Sports Illustrated
> By Rick Reily
>
> Sports? No, sports had absolutely nothing to do with the Gulf Coast's
> trying to survive Hurricane Katrina. Except that while the fifth-ranked LSU
> football team practiced in Baton Rouge, about 80 miles northwest of New
> Orleans, the coaches were hollering above the drone of helicopters, 20 in
> all, dropping off evacuees.
>
> Except the infield of the outdoor track was being used as a heliport 24
> hours a day.
>
> Except that the basketball arena, Pete Maravich Assembly Center, had been
> turned into a two-hooped hospital. Triage was where the band plays during
> games. Dialysis was where the scorekeepers sit. And pediatrics was where
> students usually wail. People still lined up outside to get in, though. It's
> just that they were all on stretchers.
>
> No, sports weren't at all involved, except that the field house next door
> was a patient ward. And the baseball stadium was an evacuee processing
> center.
>
> Katrina chaos was everywhere. In the LSU sports information office, student
> assistant Bill Martin couldn't sleep after volunteering at the Maravich
> Center, so he decided to urge his friends to help out by e-mailing them
> about what he'd seen. Blackhawk helicopters were carrying in victims who'd
> been stranded on roofs. Buses rolled in from New Orleans.... A lady fell out
> of her wheelchair and we scrambled to help her up.... A man from New Orleans
> was badly injured on his head. Five minutes later he was dead. Mothers were
> giving birth in the locker rooms.... A man was rolled in on a stretcher
> [suffering from] gunshots. A paramedic said a looter needed his boat and he
> wouldn't give it to him.... The auxiliary gym was being used as a morgue. I
> couldn't take myself down there to see it.
>
> Martin's friends should have heard the story of his colleague Jason Feirman.
> He was stranded on I-10, near the police roadblock 20 minutes outside New
> Orleans, when a displaced and distraught woman snapped and walked straight
> into traffic. Feirman jumped out of his car, sprinted down the highway,
> grabbed the woman and dragged her to the shoulder.
>
> It was a week none will forget, much as they would like to. The Tigers'
> starting quarterback, sophomore JaMarcus Russell, had a lot on his mind too
> -- the team's game this Saturday night against Arizona State and the 22
> displaced people in his three-bedroom apartment. The guy sleeping on his
> couch? Fats Domino. Domino, the R&B icon who'd been listed in the papers as
> missing for two days, is the granddad of Russell's girlfriend, Chantel
> Brimmer. After the levees gave way in New Orleans, Domino was trapped on
> the second floor of his house. He was rescued by boat and taken to the
> makeshift hospital at the Maravich Center. Russell happened to be
> volunteering there that night -- as so many LSU athletes were -- bumped into
> Domino and took him home.
>
> Since then the quarterback has been attending to the people in his
> apartment. "I've been staying up real late getting medicine and stuff," a
> bleary-eyed Russell said. "Plus, I couldn't eat after what I saw [at the
> Maravich Center]." Is he worried about losing the big game? "What's losing
> a game," he said, "when people are losing their kids, their parents, their
> houses? Nothing."
>
> Just ask Russell's teammate, defensive end Donald Hains. As of Sunday he
> still hadn't heard from his parents, who live in Diamond Head, Miss., which
> took a direct hit from Katrina. "I'm glad I have football," Hains said.
> "It's my only escape."
>
> The LSU equipment manager, Greg Stringfellow, was up to his clipboard in
> everything but football. "The Minnesota Vikings just called," he said,
> staring at his Blackberry during Saturday's practice. "They're sending two
> semis full of supplies." A Detroit Lions fan named Vince Soulsby was sending
> 25. Out in the parking lot LSU athletes had already filled up one
> tractor-trailer with stuff they had donated or collected on their own.
>
> Everybody in the athletic department was in chin-deep. Driving to campus,
> the football team's trainer, Jack Marucci heard a plea from the hoop
> hospital over the radio: Vaseline, gauze and 20cc syringes were desperately
> needed. Hey, Marucci said to himself, I have all that. Fifteen minutes
> later, he delivered them.
>
> So, no, sports had nothing to do with the Gulf Coast's surviving Katrina,
> except everything. And that's because you always forget what sports can
> provide -- can-do staff, fit and focused athletes, and huge, versatile
> arenas -- in times of trouble.
>
> Inside the field house-hospital, half the patients wore LSU purple and gold
> because so many students had donated clothing. As I gazed out at that sea of
> beds, I thought it looked as if the school's booster club was fresh from a
> train pileup. "I never used to root for LSU much," said one purple-shirted
> diabetic, who'd been rescued by boat from the flooded Charity Hospital in
> New Orleans, "but after this, I guess we're all fans."
>
> Issue date: September 12, 2005
> feature columnist on the last page. This may make you proud to be a Tiger.
>
> Sports Illustrated
> By Rick Reily
>
> Sports? No, sports had absolutely nothing to do with the Gulf Coast's
> trying to survive Hurricane Katrina. Except that while the fifth-ranked LSU
> football team practiced in Baton Rouge, about 80 miles northwest of New
> Orleans, the coaches were hollering above the drone of helicopters, 20 in
> all, dropping off evacuees.
>
> Except the infield of the outdoor track was being used as a heliport 24
> hours a day.
>
> Except that the basketball arena, Pete Maravich Assembly Center, had been
> turned into a two-hooped hospital. Triage was where the band plays during
> games. Dialysis was where the scorekeepers sit. And pediatrics was where
> students usually wail. People still lined up outside to get in, though. It's
> just that they were all on stretchers.
>
> No, sports weren't at all involved, except that the field house next door
> was a patient ward. And the baseball stadium was an evacuee processing
> center.
>
> Katrina chaos was everywhere. In the LSU sports information office, student
> assistant Bill Martin couldn't sleep after volunteering at the Maravich
> Center, so he decided to urge his friends to help out by e-mailing them
> about what he'd seen. Blackhawk helicopters were carrying in victims who'd
> been stranded on roofs. Buses rolled in from New Orleans.... A lady fell out
> of her wheelchair and we scrambled to help her up.... A man from New Orleans
> was badly injured on his head. Five minutes later he was dead. Mothers were
> giving birth in the locker rooms.... A man was rolled in on a stretcher
> [suffering from] gunshots. A paramedic said a looter needed his boat and he
> wouldn't give it to him.... The auxiliary gym was being used as a morgue. I
> couldn't take myself down there to see it.
>
> Martin's friends should have heard the story of his colleague Jason Feirman.
> He was stranded on I-10, near the police roadblock 20 minutes outside New
> Orleans, when a displaced and distraught woman snapped and walked straight
> into traffic. Feirman jumped out of his car, sprinted down the highway,
> grabbed the woman and dragged her to the shoulder.
>
> It was a week none will forget, much as they would like to. The Tigers'
> starting quarterback, sophomore JaMarcus Russell, had a lot on his mind too
> -- the team's game this Saturday night against Arizona State and the 22
> displaced people in his three-bedroom apartment. The guy sleeping on his
> couch? Fats Domino. Domino, the R&B icon who'd been listed in the papers as
> missing for two days, is the granddad of Russell's girlfriend, Chantel
> Brimmer. After the levees gave way in New Orleans, Domino was trapped on
> the second floor of his house. He was rescued by boat and taken to the
> makeshift hospital at the Maravich Center. Russell happened to be
> volunteering there that night -- as so many LSU athletes were -- bumped into
> Domino and took him home.
>
> Since then the quarterback has been attending to the people in his
> apartment. "I've been staying up real late getting medicine and stuff," a
> bleary-eyed Russell said. "Plus, I couldn't eat after what I saw [at the
> Maravich Center]." Is he worried about losing the big game? "What's losing
> a game," he said, "when people are losing their kids, their parents, their
> houses? Nothing."
>
> Just ask Russell's teammate, defensive end Donald Hains. As of Sunday he
> still hadn't heard from his parents, who live in Diamond Head, Miss., which
> took a direct hit from Katrina. "I'm glad I have football," Hains said.
> "It's my only escape."
>
> The LSU equipment manager, Greg Stringfellow, was up to his clipboard in
> everything but football. "The Minnesota Vikings just called," he said,
> staring at his Blackberry during Saturday's practice. "They're sending two
> semis full of supplies." A Detroit Lions fan named Vince Soulsby was sending
> 25. Out in the parking lot LSU athletes had already filled up one
> tractor-trailer with stuff they had donated or collected on their own.
>
> Everybody in the athletic department was in chin-deep. Driving to campus,
> the football team's trainer, Jack Marucci heard a plea from the hoop
> hospital over the radio: Vaseline, gauze and 20cc syringes were desperately
> needed. Hey, Marucci said to himself, I have all that. Fifteen minutes
> later, he delivered them.
>
> So, no, sports had nothing to do with the Gulf Coast's surviving Katrina,
> except everything. And that's because you always forget what sports can
> provide -- can-do staff, fit and focused athletes, and huge, versatile
> arenas -- in times of trouble.
>
> Inside the field house-hospital, half the patients wore LSU purple and gold
> because so many students had donated clothing. As I gazed out at that sea of
> beds, I thought it looked as if the school's booster club was fresh from a
> train pileup. "I never used to root for LSU much," said one purple-shirted
> diabetic, who'd been rescued by boat from the flooded Charity Hospital in
> New Orleans, "but after this, I guess we're all fans."
>
> Issue date: September 12, 2005
