What a sad, sad week for sports.

Oh sure, there was Separation Saturday, one of the most exciting 24-hour periods of the year in college football. The MLB divisional races are heating up, with the Mets celebrating their first division title in years and the Padres-Dodgers clashing in L.A. And then, of course, there was the start of the NFL season (which kind of speaks for itself there).

But every once in a while, you hear about those awful stories where people begin to take their sports too seriously. Some moron flies off the handle for one ridiculous reason or another and goes too far, in one respect or another.

This week, quite unfortunately, was one of those even rarer weeks … a week that saw three such occurrences.

First, there was the highly publicized case out at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, where five Duquesne basketball players — none of whom reportedly were doing anything illegal or out of the ordinary — were shot. Two have been left seriously injured, with one, Sam Ashaolu, fighting for his life in the days after the incident. Thankfully, a report says he is gaining strength at this point, though he remains in critical condition.

Apparently, at least two non-students at Duquesne crashed a campus dance party and resorted to putting bullets in half the basketball team after a seemingly harmless altercation. The saddest part is, from what it sounds like, this wasn't exactly Miami Beach. Students and faculty alike call Duquesne a very safe campus.

On the other hand, the great news (besides the improvement of Ashaolu's condition) is that the perpetrators are being arrested one by one, and justice will be served with Duquesne expecting to have a normal basketball season this winter.

However, there's the lesser-known shooting in Dandridge, Tenn., from Monday evening. While each of the players from the Duquesne travesty is expected to survive, this next story does not have such a satisfying ending.

As a youth baseball game ended in Dandridge, a small town 30 miles east of Knoxville, at the baseball diamond locals call the "Field of Dreams," the scene turned into a field of nightmares as three people were killed with a fourth wounded at the scene.

An interesting oddity of the story: the three fatal victims were each over the age of 60. You don't see that every day, a bunch of old-timers getting violent in a sports situation.

But police say the event came simply out of an "ongoing family dispute, and it wasn't related to anything there at the ballfield." Well, then what was it related to? My money says that a questionable call happened on the field, the game ended, and competitive spirit got the best of the fans, resulting in three confusing deaths.

Folks, this ain't the Little League World Series. And it ain't the Pop Warner Super Bowl, either. This isn't one of the three events I'm referring to, but I'm sure most people have seen or heard of the overzealous parent/coach who left the bench and cold-cocked a 13-year-old kid on the opposing team on Sept. 7.

I'm all for protecting your kid and all, but is body slamming another young kid, putting his life in jeopardy, really the solution? Seriously, dude, use your head.

So then the third of these incidents … well, it wasn't really an incident, but the fact that one of the officials of the Oregon-Oklahoma catastrophe has received death threats is an embarrassing example of how we let our sports get the best of us all too often.

Here's my disclaimer, before you shoot off those angry e-mails: Those miscalls were up there with the worst of all time. I'm not going to advocate any conspiracy theories that the Pac-10 refs were favoring their team, but I'm not exactly going to shoot them down, either. It's a real possibility (and if it's true, well, that's a whole other issue).

That said, I think the president of the University of Oklahoma, David Boren, may be exaggerating a tad when he proclaims the refs' mistakes an "outrageous injustice" and calls for the result of the game to be voided, aiding the Sooners in the BCS race.

I'll give you an outrageous injustice: Even though Gordon Reise made a mistake — OK, a really big mistake that never should have happened — the instant replay official of the game should not be receiving death threats over the phone. College football's a big game, sure, but it's just a game.

There aren't many times that I feel saddened when it comes to sports (well, the Yankees officially clinched the division yesterday; that brought me down a bit … but I digress), and I hate seeing sports fans unable to handle their competitive sides.

It's gotten to the point where even Sooners head coach Bob Stoops — after consistently beating on the Pac-10 repeatedly since Saturday — has asked the fans to let it go. Reise says that one call was directed at his wife and kids.

The fact that these callers are also threatening Reise's family for a mistake he made? That's an outrageous injustice, President Boren …

One outrageous injustice, among many, many more. For this week, too many.

Share your thoughts on Duquesne, OU-Oklahoma or anything else on your mind at [email protected].