Virginia Tech students wait inside McBryde Hall as police investigate the shooting. AP
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But those types of stories always take place out in the "real world" -- that turbulent, often grim slice of America you've mostly managed to insulate yourself from by choosing a profession that involves watching and writing about games. One of the reasons you love your job so much is specifically because it allows you to regularly visit college campuses, those serene and often remote places that always feel so isolated from the outside world. Places where everyone walks around with their backpacks and school sweatshirts and where the biggest concern on their minds at any given moment is whether they studied enough for that econ exam or whether they can get back to the dorm in time to squeeze in a nap before going out that night.

Of all the settings where a gunman might walk into a building one day and pointlessly end the lives of 32 innocent people, you naively assumed a college campus would rank near the bottom of the list. And that Virginia Tech, of all places, would rank near the bottom of that list.

Unfortunately, real life does not suddenly disappear into the atmosphere when you get off the highway and step foot on that Blacksburg, Va., campus -- or any other campus in America for that matter.

"How could one person cause so many senseless deaths? I'm in shock," Virginia Tech football coach Frank Beamer told ESPN.com on Monday. "This is such a caring, friendly place. This is a college town. And now one person has an impact like this?"

How do you even begin to measure that impact? There's no point trying to put yourself in the shoes of the parents who got that call Monday telling them the child they sent off to college in the fall is dead, or the students who lost a friend or classmate, or the students who survived but have now had their world turned upside down, because you're not remotely qualified to try to replicate that pain.

Instead, you try to put yourself in the shoes of Beamer, a Virginia Tech alum and, as the school's highly successful coach of the past 21 years, its most recognizable figure. Along with former star Michael Vick, no one has done more over the past decade to raise the national profile of the Blacksburg school than Beamer. It's because of him that millions of people around the country tune in at least one Thursday night every season to watch a live broadcast from the school.

"People have an image of that school they never had before," ESPN commentator Chris Fowler told you in 2003. "That university has the silliest name in the world [Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University], it's hard to pronounce, but it's now known by the entire country as Virginia Tech."

Now, sadly, Virginia Tech will forever be known by the entire country -- not just sports fans, but the entire country -- for a far different reason than the gridiron heroics of Beamer's team. A "caring, friendly place," as Beamer called it, will forever be associated with one person's senseless, violent act.

One of the nation's most prominent sports campuses has been pulled out of its tranquil vacuum.

And it could have happened at any one of them.