To watch 33 miners lifted individually to safety by way of a giant cigar tube traveling through half a mile of rock is to realize how insignificant sports really are.
So whether it's the major league baseball playoffs, the halfway point of the college football season or the start of college hoops, it pretty much all pales in comparison today to the miraculous San Jose Mine rescue in Chile.
But that doesn't mean University of Tennessee at Chattanooga basketball coach John Shulman and UT counterpart Bruce Pearl aren't worth a listen two days from the official start of preseason practice.
Especially since both have spent so much time the past few weeks being forced to discuss the four letters all college coaches fear - NCAA.
"That stuff is going to run its course," said Pearl, who is still awaiting his fate with college athletics' governing body over charges he improperly contacted recruits, then lied about it.
"All we can focus on is getting degrees, doing our jobs in the community and becoming a good basketball team."
Of course, Pearl also said, "For a coach, it's just fun to put it all together, try to put guys in positions to be successful, and try to cover up, hide and work on their weaknesses."
Not to be cruel, but isn't Pearl in the NCAA's crosshairs for trying to cover up and hide stuff?
Shulman's dealings with the NCAA are now past, the Mocs learning of their two-year probation last month for minor misdeeds in both basketball and football.
"It's behind us now," said UTC's seventh-year coach. "Our kids are resilient. Now I get to get back to what I want to do, what I've been doing for 26 years, which is coaching and working with young people. I think every coach looks forward to this time of year."
Pearl would certainly agree with that. Entering his sixth season in Volsville, he is expected to field a team capable of duplicating its Elite Eight run, a feat never before accomplished at Tennessee.
"It's a great time of year," Pearl told Times Free Press writer Wes Rucker on Wednesday. "You're going to learn a great deal every day. These guys are going to change my thinking every day with how we play and how we practice."
Shulman believes that Mocs fans will see a change in how their team plays thanks to the presence of new assistant Jay Bowen.
"Jay and I go back a long way," said Shulman. "He's not a 'yes' man. He makes me think. Just the idea of having a different voice. I gave him a bunch of tapes and asked him what we were doing well and what we were doing bad. He said he thought we were a little stagnant on offense, standing around too often and watching Keegan [Bell] make plays.
"Defensively, he thinks we were boxing out great, but we weren't going to get the ball. You can talk a lot of basketball driving six hours to Jackson, Miss., on a recruiting trip."
Pearl and Shulman used to talk all the time when the UT coach took over the Vols a year after Shulman assumed control of the Mocs.
One of Pearl's favorite banquet lines his first year in Knoxville was declare himself, "The second best Jewish coach in the state [behind Shulman]."
But then the Mocs lost a couple of tough ones to the Vols, a recruiting tussle or two arrived and the two had distanced themselves from each other.
Yet when Pearl's troubles with the NCAA began, Shulman was quick to reach out to him. Pearl told him few other coaches did.
"We had a great time at a clinic last week," Shulman said. "We're buddies again."
And as we learned again this week from the depths of a Chilean mine shaft, you can never have too many buddies.