Dennehy case isn't about being an athlete

Some people can't understand why Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy's disappearance has so widely captured the attention of the media and the public.

Dennehy is just a nondescript transfer on a low-level basketball team. He's no celebrity. He's no different than the countless other missing Americans, most of whom the media and the public ignore.

So what makes Dennehy different?

He's not different. His case is no different than the plethora of crime mysteries that have played out on our television sets and newspapers in recent years. America has grown grossly fascinated by real-life murder mysteries. It's the ultimate reality TV.

The real-life drama

Dennehy's disappearance is a real-life episode of "Law and Order." The search for his whereabouts and the speculation about who is responsible for his disappearance are the equivalent of O.J. Simpson's slow-speed car chase. The highly publicized, slow-speed search for Dennehy is raising the public's interest in the case.

It's certainly far more intriguing than some of the other recent celebrated cases, such as Laci Peterson or Chante Mallard, who struck a man with her car and left him to die lodged in the windshield.

By all accounts, Dennehy was a young man on a college campus afraid that someone, possibly a teammate, was out to harm him. Why didn't he go to the police? Why didn't he go home?

So far a former teammate and an incoming Baylor basketball recruit have been questioned in Dennehy's disappearance. Neither man has been arrested or named as a suspect. And neither man appears to have endured one of those marathon police interrogations that the cop shows make us feel are commonplace.

It's also been reported that Dennehy and his former teammate/roommate purchased guns for protection. I would love to say that I'm shocked that two college athletes felt the need to carry weapons. But I'm not. College kids are often too stupid to realize that handguns might be America's worst form of protection. And I knew plenty of college kids who carried guns or owned shotguns because they thought it was cool.

Worth watching

It's silly to suggest the media are making too much of the Dennehy case. This is a case in which life is truly stranger than fiction. Hollywood couldn't have written a script with this many possible plot twists. I have no interest in celebrating this tragedy. But I can't deny that I'm following it as closely as I followed the O.J. Simpson case. Heck, unlike the Simpson trial, this case is a mystery. We're all amateur detectives trying to figure out what happened to Dennehy.

As a sports journalist I'll be very interested in how the Baylor basketball team recovers from this tragedy. Coach Dave Bliss will have the toughest coaching job in America. His mission might be more complicated than what Eddie Sutton had to pull off at Oklahoma State after a 2001 plane crash killed two players and several members of the basketball program.

People are conditioned to deal with death, even unexpected deaths. We know how to grieve and eventually move on. We know how to combat our fear of flying.

But how does a team survive a murder/disappearance investigation? If my son played on the Baylor team, I would want him to transfer no matter what, even if everyone was exonerated, even if Dennehy turned up alive today.

I just can't understand how two college athletes could fear for their lives to the point that they armed themselves but never sought the protection of the police.

That's what Bliss would have to explain to me. That's what I would want to know if I'm a parent.

Now that I think about it, that's probably what the police should be asking themselves. Understanding that might help them solve this case.

Jason Whitlock is a sports columnist for The Kansas City Star.