COLUMBIA, Mo. - Adam Sparks and the Sparks family are at the center of several different interlocking current events affecting the country.
Adam, a senior cornerback at Missouri, is getting ready to play college football in the Southeastern Conference, with the Tigers' first game scheduled to take place against Alabama in less than a month.
His older brother Jared is a redshirt senior at Purdue who moved from quarterback to wide receiver. Jared will not be playing college football this fall because of the coronavirus pandemic, which caused the Big Ten conference to cancel all fall sports competition.
Back home in Geismar, La., south of Baton Rouge, their parents Kenyatta and Janelle are preparing for Hurricane Laura, a Category 4 storm that made landfall this morning at Lake Charles, about 120 miles west of Geismar.
"That's something that me and my mom and my dad have definitely been talking about on a daily basis. They're used to it," Adam said Wednesday on a Zoom call with media. "We stayed there during Hurricane Gustav (in 2008, a Category 2 storm), they decided to stay there. So they know what to do, but it's something that we definitely don't know yet."
After the Boilermakers and Missouri - and the Sparks brothers - faced off in 2017 and '18, with the road team winning each time, Adam will compete for a starting spot on the Tigers defense this year, while Jared and his Purdue teammates will not have the same opportunity.
The NCAA granted all fall sports athletes an extra year of eligibility Aug. 21, so Jared can still suit up in 2021, and Adam said he has encouraged his older brother to make the most of the time without games.
"My main focus was just to let him know that, first of all, since y'all got y'all year back, just take that year to your advantage," Sparks said. "Use it as a redshirt year, you know, get your body healthy. It's a year off for your body so that can be good as well. He's got to use that as the upper hand."
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After a Kenosha, Wisc., police officer severely injured Jacob Blake, a Black man, by shooting him in the back seven times earlier this week, the Milwaukee Bucks set off a string of postponements in the sports world Wednesday by refusing to play their Eastern Conference playoff game against the Orlando Magic in the NBA's bubble in central Florida.
All three NBA games scheduled to be played Wednesday were postponed, and the WNBA also elected to postpone its three Wednesday games with a player-led movement. MLB's Milwaukee Brewers agreed with the Cincinnati Reds to postpone their home game Wednesday, and other MLB teams followed, as did all but two MLS teams.
Growing unrest and a general frustration with continued police brutality in the country, including the recent killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, despite three months of continuous protest tipped the Bucks players over the edge, and they paved the way for other teams and leagues to follow.
Missouri football coach Eli Drinkwitz was asked about the shooting Tuesday, because the Tigers were one of the first NCAA teams to organize a public demonstration and voting registration campaign in early June, and said he and his team hadn't really discussed it.
He opened his Zoom address Wednesday by saying he wasn't as informed as he should have been on the issue.
"I made myself aware after the meeting, and just disappointed, extremely disappointed, that we're having to address these situations again," he said, then quoted Galatians 6:9. "But it says in the Good Book, 'Don't grow weary while doing good, for in due time you shall receive your reward if you do not lose heart.' We've got to keep bringing it to attention, because there is a real problem in the United States of America. Abraham Lincoln said, 'We're striving to become a more perfect Union,' and we're not there yet.
"We're not there yet. The atrocities that have occurred, on videotape, in the last three months, it's not right. It's not right, no matter what justification was used, there was no reason for seven shots to be fired in that situation, and that's my opinion. We've got to make reform, we've got to address the issue, so this does not continue to happen. And I want to be a part of the solution, our football team wants to be a part of the solution.
"I support the police, and I support, there's good police officers. But the situation that occurred, again, for the third time, and third time in three months, we've got, as the United States of America, to continue to do better."
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Drinkwitz also said Wednesday the football team, including coaches and staff, has two individuals with active coronavirus cases and three others in isolation because of contact tracing.
Missouri athletics has avoided a serious outbreak thus far. In an update posted to its student COVID-19 dashboard Wednesday, the University reported 228 active cases among students, an increase of 69 from Monday's numbers. That total is still less than 1 percent of the University's student body, and 27 have recovered.
Boone County posted a new one-day high of confirmed cases Wednesday with 87 confirmed cases, 64 of which were in the 18- to 22-year-old age group. There are 468 active cases in Boone County, while 1,677 former cases have been removed from isolation. Boone County announced its seventh COVID-19 death Wednesday.
The Advocate (La.) reported Wednesday all but four of LSU's offensive linemen are in quarantine after either testing positive or close contact and high risk of exposure with a positive case. The SEC mandates a 10-day isolation period for positive test results and 14 days for high-risk exposures.