SPECIAL TEAM

The conflict in Iraq brings home the powerful bond between athletes who play with the game on the line and troops who are willing to put their lives on the line.

Kansas Jayhawk's assistant Joe Holladay takes his spot on the sideline knowing he can't trust his senses. His eyes see the American flag, but his mind sees war. His ears hear the national anthem, but his mind hears war. His eyes see a kid on the other team shooting a J with his hands just so, and his mind sees war.

Concentration, it seems, is the first casualty of the home front. Holladay's son, Matt, is a 1999 West Point grad and a paratrooper in the 173rd Airborne. Matt was stationed at Aviano Air Force Base in Italy when he got a phone call just about the time Dad was preparing for the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. "We don't know where he is," the coach says, softly. "He couldn't say." Like every family member with a relative overseas, Joe fights his overactive imagination. Everything is filtered through thoughts of his son, the flag, the anthem, the way a kid shoots just like Matt. Joe Holladay doesn't know where his son is, but he has a pretty good idea. There are about 20 networks broadcasting round-the-clock hints, and on March 26, the Pentagon announced that 1,000 Army paratroopers from the 173rd had landed in Northern Iraq. "I think about the war first, then basketball," Joe Holladay says. "As a parent, as a citizen, I can't help it."

Too often these days, the mixture of sports and war proves rhetorically combustible, leading directly to misplaced profundities and furrowed-brow pleas for perspective. The grim visages of sportscasters appear, sermonizing on the relative insignificance of a ball going through a hoop. And then, of course, back to the game. It's no coincidence that extended peacetime elevated our games and those who play them. Absent Pattonesque heroes, we gradually substituted those who can shoot or hit or throw a ball better than the more common among us. Which makes sense, in a nonsensical way: War and sports are the primary fantasies of childhood. (Male childhood, anyway.) Proof of how seriously we now take our games is there in our overpowering need to link them, unlike movies or plays or nights out with friends to the unrelated events of faraway dictators and local presidents. But now, with the war in Iraq insinuating itself into Opening Day ceremonies and Final Four festivities, sports comes with a warning. Go ahead and watch your games, but remember: Dan Rathers troubled look and somber tone lurk in the background, liable to materialize without notice.

"I can't watch the news," says free agent wide receiver Antonio Freeman. "It's too draining." Antonio's brother, Marine Staff Sergeant Clarence Freeman, is believed to be on the front lines in Iraq. Antonio hasn't heard from him since three days before the ground campaign began. "I guess people think we're glued to the television," Antonio says. "But it's really the opposite. I can't get engulfed in it. Sitting around listening for the names of the injured, wondering if he's part of something, wondering where he is, you can't put yourself through that." Freeman escapes his fears by working out, thinking of his brother as he attempts to catch on with another NFL team. "You can't crawl into a corner," he says. This is the way an athlete handles the unknown: He finds solace in pass routes and barbells, the way an accountant might find comfort in numbers, or a writer in words. "Football is a priority in my life," Freeman says, "but there are so many more things: my family, my brother's wife and two children. I'm trying to be there for them. I know he would want us to get along with everyday life, but my best friend's involved in a war and that's always on my mind. My parents raised me, but without him I would not be the athlete I am. The sad part is, he's got a 1-year-old son he hasn't had much opportunity to be around."

In war, the games don't necessarily become small. They just become games again, reverting to their original purpose: diversion. Much-needed diversion. "There's an anxiety I feel all day long," says Swin Cash, the Detroit Shock guard. "I can't shake it." Her brother, Steven Menifee, is a college graduate who enlisted in the Army following Sept. 11 and is now in Iraq. "Pretty much the only release I have is to get in the gym and work out for a couple of hours, play some basketball and let my mind go," says the WNBA star. "That's my sanity, the part of my daily routine I'm holding onto. But every second there's a silence, I'm back to thinking about it. He's not ready for what's happening over there. I think about him and wonder how many others are like him: too young."

There should be no surprise at the number of jocks bound by blood or friendship to the war in Iraq. Most American athletes grow up in the kinds of families and neighborhoods that make pro sports a dream and the military a viable career option. And, every day, the list of athletes with all-too-real, all-too-close connections to the war seems to grow longer. Blake Sloan, a right wing for the Calgary Flames, has a college friend in the Special Forces, fighting in a place Sloan describes as at the tip of the sword. Sloan's teammate, RW Chris Clark, has a high school friend who is a West Point graduate and a U.S. Army officer. Two American wingmen in Canada, drawn to events half a world away. Todd Greene, a catcher for the Texas Rangers, learned that his wife's cousin, Army Chief Warrant Officer Ron Young, was taken prisoner by the Iraqis after the Apache helicopter he was piloting was shot down. "We're all real close, so this has been a shock," Greene said.

Hank Fraley, a center for the Eagles, has a brother, David, who is an Army sergeant in Iraq. Lomas Brown, the Buccaneers offensive tackle, has a stepson in the Army in Iraq. Jeff Cook, a member of Jeff Gordon's crew, has a brother in the Army Reserve who's on his way to Kuwait. The Rainbow Warrior wears a patch on his helmet to show his support for the 846th Transportation Company. Julian Peterson, the 49ers linebacker, e-mails his best friend, a submariner somewhere in the Gulf, every day. He doesn't hear back. Kyle Korver, Creighton's All-America forward, played in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on the day the ground war in Iraq began, knowing that Jeff Mishler, a close childhood friend, was leading a platoon in the Army's 3rd Infantry. "Its crazy, because I was playing basketball, and he was over there fighting and risking his life to protect us," Korver says. "I talked about it with my teammates, how weird it felt to be playing. We all felt it. March Madness usually has so much hype, but there was a different feel this year. It just didn't feel like it was as important."

Korver is of a generation raised without protracted war. In such times in America, anyway, young men see playing fields as places to test their mettle and manhood. Games adopt war-speak: Coaches are generals, players are troops, drivers are warriors. But real conflict puts the lie to these imaginings. "People talk about me being trained to lead my team and how much pressure I have on me," Korver says. "Come on. Look at Jeff. He's got other peoples lives in his hands. If we lose, who cares? If he screws up, he could be dead. What's the worst I can do? Miss a shot? When I look at him, it strikes me how much older than me he seems, how much faster he's had to grow up." Funny thing, though: Stateside, they're playing games and dismissing their importance; but in the Middle East, they're growing up too fast and clinging to the normalcy of those games. Twice a day, morning and evening, the leadership of the 1st Infantry Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division receives a Battlefield Update Briefing. Basically, it's news of the significant activities of the past 12 hours. And during the first four days of the NCAA Tournament, the BUB was followed by results of the previous days games. The scores always caused a few minutes of head-shaking, high-fiving and smack-talking before the units commanders returned to business. Sports SOP. Stop the games, NCAA President Brand? In the Persian Gulf, a damage-control assistant aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln sent an e-mail to Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon that was published on March 21. "As someone who is forward deployed there is no greater support the NCAA could provide than holding March Madness as scheduled," wrote Lt. Cmdr. John D. Rickards Jr.

Sports are a great escape for many and a connection to home for all. Of course, that connection brings its own controversy. Its probably cliche to ask the question, "Where else but America?" But where else could you find the saga of Wake Forest guard Steve Lepore and forward Josh Howard? They are roommates, teammates and friends, one (Lepore) with a brother serving as a Navy intelligence office in the Persian Gulf, the other (Howard) fending off criticism on the eve of the NCAA Tournament after making antiwar comments. Howard, who switched his major to religion after Sept. 11, told a newspaper in Winston-Salem that George W. Bush took the country to war against Iraq for no other reason than "he's mad because they about killed his daddy. Now he can't find bin Laden, he's running to Saddam. Its crazy." Their friendship survives. Steve Lepore said his brother knows different people have different perspectives on what's happening there. "But I think he knows no matter what they feel about the war, everyone feels strongly about the soldiers and the sailors. They're never terribly far from anyone's thoughts." Fact is, the two Demon Deacons are a microcosm of the nations shifting moral compass on the war.

Steve Nash tossed himself into the argument when he arrived at an All-Star Game shootaround wearing a T-shirt that read, "No War. Shoot For Peace." A friend made it, and Nash, a Canadian, believes it. The Mavs guard hasn't backed down, even after being criticized by former Navy man David Robinson: "I never said, 'Go out and believe what I believe.' The message was, 'Go out and decide for yourself.' But I am 100% behind the soldiers protecting our freedom." Who wouldn't be? Certainly not Bills wideout Josh Reed, who shaved two notches in his left eyebrow on the day bombing started in Baghdad. One notch represents older brother Norbert, an Army medic in Iraq; the other is for his cousin, Damian Jolivette, a Navy enlisted man in the Gulf. "I think about them all the time," Reed says. "But now I see them every time I look in the mirror. I see them every time someone asks me about it." The older Reed knows that there are Bills season tickets waiting for him when he returns, just a few rows behind the bench. "I told him, 'We need you here, too,'" Josh explains. "We grew up with a single mom, and my brother was like my dad. The last thing I said before he left was, 'You guys get it done and get back home.' Speaking of his son, Joe Holladay says, "We're proud of him. Proud and worried." Pride. Worry. The emotional collision confuses the senses. And the games, once again, are games.

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