I’ve been enlightened.

In perhaps the most eventful, but certainly the strangest, semester I’ve had in higher education, I’ve been asked for insights about a smattering of sports topics. From Troy Davis’ sock preference to my pick for this year’s Super Bowl champ — somewhere, somehow, somebody got the idea that I know something about athletics.

News flash: I know possibly less about sports than Fred Hoiberg knows about fist fighting.

For anyone I’ve ever talked with while covering a football or basketball game, this comes as no great shock. For my uncles and cousins I see only at Christmas time … I’ve got some explaining to do.

Most assume that my inability to churn out sports facts and figures with calculator precision is what prompted me to begin weaning myself from sports writing and reporting, a process I initiated last spring.

In a way, I wish that were true. But it’s not.

Here’s the real story: I woke up one fine crisp morning last spring and must have bumped my head or something because I had a realization like none before. Apparently, while I was sleeping I reached that all-important “real person” plateau.

In my sleep, I narrowed my list of career options to two equally rewarding fields. I had goals. I had passion about my line of work. I even had enough gumption to get up and go to class. Must have been divine intervention.

The trouble was, for the first time I knew that sports writing, what I had previously thought was my one true calling, really wasn’t that rewarding, for me at least. I like sports, always have and still do. And, for the most part, I liked those that I was charged with covering.

But for some odd reason that morning it dawned on me that the world is bigger than game balls, jock straps and support bras. In the course of one night’s sleep, somebody gave me a world view. Hard to believe, but it happened.

Included in this new insight, was the notion that as a society, and yes, as a college, we place too much emphasis on athletics, an age-old song that I had refused to believe.

Don’t get me wrong. I like my job as a columnist, and I enjoy the part-time work I do for the Des Moines Register sports department.

But I’m not caught up in it anymore. I don’t get upset when Iowa State misses an opportunity to pull an upset on the football field. My biggest worry in life isn’t finding replacements for Fred Hoiberg, Loren Meyer and Julius Michalik. I don’t feel like I missed a test if I don’t find time to read the sports page and I am finding it increasingly difficult to watch professional athletics.

Some will say I’m biting the hand that feeds me, but I don’t think so. I think I’m a better person for at least acknowledging that I’m not going to discover world peace writing a column and covering a few games.

If you want the cliff notes version, my point is this: Go to the football, basketball, volleyball, hockey and soccer games. Go to the swim meets, the cross country meets, the gymnastics meets, the golf meets, the wrestling meets and the tennis meets.

But when you come home from Cyclone Stadium or Hilton Coliseum, don’t bring the game with you. Take it for what it’s worth, and a good football game can be worth a lot, and let it go.

If I’ve learned anything this semester, it’s that there are some things I just can’t control, the outcome of a football game included. But in the whole scheme of things, it’s important to realize that there are larger issues than football, basketball or athletics in general.

Life will go on, even after a tough loss, and athletic events will continue, even if I’m not there to write about it.