The Missouri sports injury bug claimed its biggest victim yet — literally and figuratively — on Tuesday.
As if fate decided it wasn’t enough to simply strike down player after player on the MU football team this fall, it apparently felt the need to lash out at the MU basketball team for good measure. All-Big 12 forward Laurence Bowers’ season-ending ACL tear Tuesday provided the biggest of all the leg injuries Tiger athletes have suffered already this school year.
On the field, I cannot think of a greater loss for either sport than the hole Bowers’ absence creates in the Missouri post. Bowers reached the all-Big 12 and all-Big 12 Defensive Teams last season following a junior season that averaged 11.6 points and 6.1 rebounds per game. His absence further thins a Missouri frontcourt that planned to rely heavily on his offensive play to challenge the bigger teams of the Big 12. New coach Frank Haith now finds himself with his greatest challenge since accepting the job.
Despite the gravity of the basketball team’s situation, the most prominent issue at hand is that the hopes and dreams of a fellow MU student were crushed. A college kid who goes to class, eats in the dining halls and enjoys time with friends is suffering. I think we as sports fans miss that side of the issue quite frequently, particularly in the voluntary field of college athletics.
It’s ironic that I heard the news about Bowers’ injury while gathering information for my Principles of Multimedia project on Missouri senior left tackle Elvis Fisher’s climb back from season-ending injury, a project called “Learning to Fall.” The news came one day after Fisher shared with me the story of his 40-consecutive start streak ending on a routine play in camp just before the season’s start.
It also came a couple of hours before Bowers could be found at the Columbia Public Library, reading to area youth. While fans were busy stressing out over conference realignment and the loss of one of Missouri’s top basketball players, Bowers was losing himself in the pages of another’s life.
On perhaps one of the darkest days of his life, Laurence Bowers wasn’t even thinking about Laurence Bowers. The selflessness is something we should all commend once we move past the triggered responses of how his injury affects us as sports fans.
It might be easy to view Kendial Lawrence as the Missouri running back currently out and Will Ebner as the guy who is supposed to play middle linebacker. Even if unintentional, to use athletes when we want them and then to toss them aside is to miss the greater value of being a sports fan. The feel-good stories of sports feel good for a reason.
Undoubtedly, we all watch the game for the sake of the game itself, and to get too caught up in off-the-field happenings is to lose sight of the competition we love. Bowers’ injury, like Fisher’s and like the many others that struck the MU football team this fall, is a mighty blow to what we all hoped would be a strong year for Missouri athletics.
You can’t blame sports fans for viewing an injury as sports fans. But at the same time, we must never forget the human aspect.
In sports, faces fade as seasons change. Human value never loses color.