You find yourself saying "of course" quite a lot during any discussion of sports and war these days. Your friend jumps up to explain why pushing back any games, any games anywhere, in the face of an attack on Iraq would be an unnecessary capitulation. Of course. Your colleague interjects that it can't possibly doom the world of sports to shut things down for a while, in the face of a kind of war that has never been fought in the history of man. Of course.

	After terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, fans understood when sports came to a halt.

And those are the answers, of course. One right after the other.

Of course sports should shut down if the U.S. invasion of Iraq begins this week. Of course they should. Surprised that any American even asks that question. There is a time for games, and the opening salvo of a war isn't the time.

And of course, sports should resume as quickly as possible after that, as quickly as it makes sense and feels respectful to do so. There's no timetable to this, no established outline, but the pro football and baseball leagues in America sat down for a week after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Is the commencement of war in the Middle East worth any less?

Here's what I know beyond the shadow of a doubt: Sports will hold. It's a great thing, the resiliency of games. The NCAA tournament would face logistical problems and network headaches and your standard fan beef in rescheduling its opening and subsequent rounds, but trust me, we'd get through it. They'd eventually play the games. We'd watch. Theaters go dark all the time, for this reason and that. The crowds come back.

Sports' experience with the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers comes into play here, and it's an instructive set of thoughts. If you think back to 2001, you'll recall how the leagues agonized over what to do, how they ran through the scenarios of the past -- the JFK assassination, the attempt on Ronald Reagan's life, the Gulf War -- in a vain attempt to find some absolute answers to their questions.

But in the end, what the leagues did was simply to muddle through, and it worked beautifully. Baseball shut down its games. The NFL postponed for a week. The nation, even sports nation, focused its attention on the serious matters of the day. And when it was time for the games to resume, Americans returned to them not only with a small sense of relief and gratefulness but with a smidgen of increased goodwill toward the leagues and those who populate them.

Sports stood taller then, and all for the simple and seemingly obvious act of taking two steps backward. Two steps feels appropriate just about now, too.

As NCAA president Myles Brand explained his dilemma this week with the men's and women's tournaments, he finds himself torn between the reality of the day and a desire not to let Saddam Hussein control American sports or the schedules upon which they're played. Never mind that its our president and not Saddam who is actually making the call on war. The sports governing bodies in the U.S. aren't subject to Iraqi whim. It's our call.

And the right call is simply to step back -- not down, but back. The right call is the obvious one; don't complicate it. Sports will hold. Sports will survive. It's a far more intriguing question to me whether the Academy Awards go off on Sunday, if war begins on Thursday, than the question of whether games would be played on the day war begins. Of course games aren't played that day, or the day after, or, probably, the day after that, or maybe for a week. It's axiomatic. Any other thought strikes me as wildly ignorant of the state of the world and the seriousness of the moment.

Any sports fan should understand the value of the games. At a time like this, the value probably increases threefold. There will be, in time, a tremendous benefit to devoting an hour or two each day to an emotional respite like the NCAA tourneys, to wondering whether Kentucky can capitalize on this shot at the Final Four or whether Arizona's tank job in the Pac-10 tournament suggests the slightest thing about its championship chances. There's value in revisiting the Lakers-Kings rivalry. There's value in a fastball on Opening Day. There might even be value in wondering what Mike Piazza's thinking about half the time, though you might want to consult the experts first.

That value will stand. It most certainly will endure a few days of inconvenience. That goes for the rest of us, too. Sports has its great place in American society. Part of that place is knowing when not to matter. We'll get back to the games. They'll be there.

Mark Kreidler is a columnist with the Sacramento Bee and a regular contributor to ESPN.com