The tragedy in Kansas City was a shocking loss for Emmaus' Mike Brusko

http://blogs.mcall.com/groller/ FROM KEITH GROLLER Saturday brought a fresh reminder to yours truly about the difference between sports and the real world. In Philadelphia, I witnessed the emotional ending of the Parkland football season. There's not a more emotional time than when a football season comes to an end, especially one that goes 14 games like Parkland's did. It was tough to watch as player after player, with tears in their eyes, hugged coach Jim Morgans on the field at Northeast High School. Morgans, not the emotional type, got choked up as well. It was a tough loss for a team that went to Philly with an 11-game losing streak and really feeling like it was capable of going all the way. And, the way Parkland was dominated didn't leave the Trojans feeling good at all. But then I come home and find out that former Emmaus three-sport athlete Mike Brusko was a teammate and a close friend of Kansas City linebacker Jovan Belcher, and it hit home again, the vast difference between the loss of a game and the loss of life.. And you get the sense that more was lost than two lives in the KC tragedy. Life will never be the same for anyone associated with those families and that team. The hurt, the despair was evident in Brusko's voice when I called him on Saturday night. The Service Electric reporter and camera man said it was almost therapeutic for him to talk about his friend because he had been dealing with so many strong emotions all day and wanted an outlet to express them. I know that football brings together people like no other sport. Once a teammate, always a teammate. Even years later, football players can come together and a bond almost instantly re-appears no matter how many years have elapsed since they took off their uniforms for the last time. When you arrive on a college campus together as Brusko and Belcher did at Maine back in 2005 and then spend four seasons together, there's a bond there that can't be explained. As Mike told me, he was nine hours from his Lehigh Valley home and Belcher was hours eight away from his Long Island home, and when you're that far away from where you're comfortable, you seek out those in the same situation just to get by and through all the ups and downs that a student-athlete goes through at college. These guys were tight, and Brusko was devastated to learn what happened to his good friend. He couldn't comprehend the Belcher he knew doing something like this. He knew him as a fun-loving, passionate young man who was a great teammate and great friend. When the news broke nationally, it was incomprehensible to believe that anyone fortunate enough to be playing in the National Football League would get so distraught that he felt the need to end two lives the way Belcher did. Then when you hear all of the good things Brusko said about Belcher, it's even harder to believe. And this was not the standard "He was a good guy" routine. Brusko genuinely admired Belcher. And he was genuinely crushed by this news. I appreciated Mike being willing to talk about Belcher for a story in Sunday's print edition of The Morning Call. Here's a link to it: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-brusko-1201-20121201,0,5927848.story But again, as tough as the loss was that Parkland experienced in Philadelphia, it was just a football game. Those kids will bounce back and move forward with their lives and careers. The loss in KC, felt on a very personal level by Mike Brusko, is the kind of blow that affects us all. It reminds us that no matter how much we think we have everything and everyone all figured out, life is still capable of punching us right in the gut and leaving us reeling.