Virginia Tech's image shattered by shooting rampage

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When you follow the world of college sports for a living, it's easy to get sucked into its vacuum.

You've been to Ohio State's campus so many times you can drive from the airport to the football complex without directions -- but you wouldn't have the foggiest idea where the classrooms are. You've devoted countless hours over the past year documenting Florida's championship football and basketball players, yet you've never given even a passing thought to what accolades the 50,000 other students on that campus may be accumulating.

Along those lines, you've been to Virginia Tech's bucolic campus on three occasions over the past five years -- each time for a Hokies football game. You walked around the grounds for a little while prior to one particular night game, admiring the luscious, green landscaping and the many classic, limestone (actually called "Hokie Stone") buildings. But mostly you were preoccupied with getting yourself to Lane Stadium for one of those colossal, top-10 showdowns with the Miami Hurricanes.

But then you turned on CNN on Monday and watched video of police swarming those same, familiar, beautiful buildings. Medical personnel carrying stretchers across those green grounds. Stunned students milling about outside Cassell Coliseum, the same building where Deron Washington made all those ridiculous dunks last year.

You're pulled out of that vacuum pretty quickly.

Prior to Monday, you knew of Virginia Tech president Charles Steger primarily for one, now seemingly trivial reason -- as the man who finally pulled the plug on former Hokies quarterback Marcus Vick's trouble-filled career.

On Monday afternoon, Steger showed up on your television offering his reaction to a shooting on his campus. Not just a shooting -- the deadliest campus shooting in American history.

... Wait, what's that they're saying now? ... The deadliest shooting rampage of any kind in American history?

At Virginia Tech????

You say to yourself: This simply can't be.

You watched the hideous footage of Columbine on another April afternoon eight years ago. You lived in Atlanta when a disgruntled day-trader opened fire at a Buckhead office complex later that same year. You've read no shortage of other stories about other school or office shootings in the years since, and you're well aware that these and other senseless acts of violence have become an unfortunate aspect of our society.