The world is a crazy beautiful ugly complicated place and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy. The caravan keeps moving on and the job of the longform writer or filmmaker or radio broadcaster is to stop - is to pause - and when the caravan goes away that's when this stuff comes.
Academics often discount the value of top-rated sports programs in helping to develop a campus life and in contributing to the overall success of a college or university. Like it or not the sports programs a college or university has are the front page of that university.