Why play as scheduled? Game so secondary to tragedy

• Game will be played a short distance from where Jovan Belcher killed himself.
• NFL should have moved the game to Monday night to allow a day of mourning.
• Fans would have understood decision, even if it disrupted schedules, hurt sales.

Regardless of what happens on the field at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday, it won't really matter much now.

Two lives were lost in a senseless tragedy.

Yet the Kansas City Chiefs and Carolina Panthers will tee it up before 80,000-plus at Arrowhead Stadium -- a single day after police say Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher fatally shot Kasandra Perkins, the mother of his infant daughter, then took his own life outside team headquarters.

Unlike the lives, the game is going on as scheduled -- a short distance from where Belcher shot himself in front of Chiefs coach Romeo Crennel and Scott Pioli, the team's general manager.

Football in Kansas City, on this Sunday? Why not postpone the game? What's the rush?

Something seems too weird about having a game so close in timing, location and emotions to the tragedy. Yet whatever discussions were held behind closed doors between Chiefs players and staff, and on conference calls with league and players unions officials, did not move the needle in favor of pushing back the game.

Not that you'd expect this from the all-powerful, so-popular NFL. It's big business. Moving the game on short notice to, say, Monday night, would have wreaked havoc on work schedules of thousands, ruined tailgate parties and clipped into revenue streams.

So what.

Although I'm sure there will likely be some acknowledgement of the victims before and perhaps during Sunday's game, the NFL and the Chiefs could have sent a strong anti-violence message by declaring Sunday as a day of mourning while re-scheduling to play the game on Monday night.

Perhaps more fans than you'd think would accept that as reasonable.

But that's not reality. It takes a national tragedy or major weather event to alter the NFL's schedule, like a hurricane. Sometimes. Superstorm Sandy devastated New York and New Jersey a few weeks ago, but with Giants Stadium intact, the New York Giants and Pittsburgh Steelers played the following Sunday, as scheduled.

In this case, the Chiefs players -- and particularly the six team captains who expressed themselves to coach Crennel -- apparently were not pressured by the NFL and wanted to play the game as scheduled.

On some levels, I get it. Even in the grieving process, people want to continue to do whatever it is that they do as a coping mechanism. Maybe that's what some of the Chiefs players are feeling.

But I find it difficult to believe that Crennel, Pioli and the Chiefs security officer who witnessed Belcher shoot himself, would want to be at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday, so soon after what they experienced -- and could not prevent.

You know they tried. And they were not thinking football.

Grieve for them, too.