Sports and real life are not the same. Every day that passes is another reminder that sports people are real people with interesting jobs that we pay to watch. This is nothing new.

Therefore, drawing a line between what happens on the field and what happens off the field seldom works. Indianapolis Star Columnist Gregg Doyel ignored all that and wrote a pre-playoff column wondering aloud if accused murderer James Holmes could hear the Broncos practice. Because that makes sense.

He’s in there, and I’m wondering if he can hear the music.

Doyel starts down the winding road to gibberish.

It’s not a silly question.

Yes, it is. If it weren’t you wouldn’t have written that sentence to talk yourself into the rest of the column.

I’m standing outside the Arapahoe County jail, and I can hear the music. It’s coming from the Denver Broncos’ practice facility next door, and that’s a literal description.

Literally, he writes words here that are literally annoying literally all the time. If he literally didn’t mean the other stuff he wrote, then I wonder why he doesn’t use literal more often. But he’s painted a scene, so let’s wade further into the abyss.

The practice field is next to the jail, so close that I can read the Broncos’ jersey numbers – there’s Peyton – as I’m touching the chain-link fence that surrounds the jail. There’s razor wire at the top of the fence. I’m not touching that.

Get that? He’s talking to you, the reader. Look over there, there’s Peyton. Those are mountains. There’s the apology he should probably write tomorrow.

And so on.

Media commenting on media is very navel gazing, but Doyel’s column goes beyond typical print journalist trolling — it trivializes what people in Aurora and their families have gone through over the past three years.

In the years since the tragic shooting at the Century 16, approximately no readers have asked, “I wonder what James Holmes thinks about the Broncos?” No death penalty proponent has mentioned in their argument that James Holmes should never be able to watch a Broncos playoff game. Similarly, no death penalty opponent has ever mentioned that Holmes should spend the rest of his life knowing that the Broncos are out there, and that he can never get to watch them. Because that’s just dumb.

Like a ship without a direction or a point to the rest of his story, Doyel descends into über-homer troll mode.

 So it is with a handful of Broncos over the years, getting arrested in Arapahoe County and being admitted as an inmate at the jail right next to their football facility.

Football players being arrested! The irony of the jail and the facility right next to each other! Did OJ drive past the Coliseum too?

Imagine being Broncos executive Matt Russell, sentenced in May 2014 to six months of work release at the Arapahoe County jail, waking up every morning behind bars and then walking a quarter mile to the Broncos facility, then walking back to spend another night in jail.

Imagine that. Or don’t. Because it’s basically irrelevant to the point of Doyel’s story. Which continues.

Or imagine being Broncos star linebacker Von Miller and being arrested in August 2013 for missing a court appearance at that courthouse next to the practice facility. And being Miller and almost missing another court appearance in October 2013, before showing up two hours late. Less than two minutes from the locker room.

I forgot. What part about the theater massacre does this pertain to?

James Holmes in the jail now.

Oh, that’s right.

Music playing. A man laughing.

Don’t ask me who’s laughing. Or why. At this moment, I can’t imagine finding anything funny at all.

Scene goes to black. And fin.

A million monkeys with a million typewriters couldn’t have pounded out drivel like this.

Don’t ask me why. Or what. At this moment, Gregg Doyel should have found something better to waste perfectly good ink on.

Reach Managing Editor Aaron Cole at 303-750-7555 or acole@aurorasentinel.com