Bloody Sundays by Mike Freeman

Author:Mike Freeman [Freeman, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-06-203004-7
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2003-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

II

The day after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, a group of Giants players walked onto the practice field, located a mere ten miles from the devastation where the World Trade Center towers once stood. The smoke from the fall of the buildings still covered part of Manhattan, creating a thin, ugly layer of smog. The players could see it all. And it wasn’t just that image that brought tears to some of their eyes. It was the knowledge that only a few feet away from their grass outdoor practice field, inside the indoor practice dome used when the weather was disagreeable, the bodies of some of the victims were spread across the floor. The facility was now a makeshift morgue. Rescue vehicles dashed in and out of the parking lot. The Giants were in no mood to play football.

The NFL, like the rest of the country, remained stunned following the suicide airplane crashes, but the league was still considering playing its slate of 15 games, despite safety issues and logistical concerns about hundreds of players flying around the country. Approximately half of the league’s 32 owners wanted the games to go on, citing the importance of returning to normalcy. And that might have happened. Then something remarkable occurred.

On Wednesday night, one day after the towers fell, union leader Gene Upshaw, a former offensive lineman for the Oakland Raiders, a Hall-of-Famer, and as skilled a leader as there is in all of professional sports, held a conference call with the player representatives from each franchise. At first some of the reps were ambivalent about whether to play that weekend, while others agreed with ownership, that playing might help the country heal. Strahan grew impatient and, as he always does, spoke up forcefully and effectively.

“All of you need to understand something,” Strahan said. “At our practice fields we can still see the smoke. They’re taking bodies into our practice bubble. I don’t know about any of you, but I’m not playing this weekend. I can’t do it. And I know a lot of my teammates won’t either. They’re still digging bodies out of the rubble here. If we played, it would be disrespectful to the people who died. It’s as simple as that.” Strahan stressed that the horrors were not just pictures on a TV screen. Jets center Kevin Mawae echoed Strahan, his words equally as fervent. Clearly, if the NFL did decide to continue, players on the two New York franchises would not.

The majority of reps sat in stunned silence following the words from Strahan and Mawae. The players on the call voted 17—10 not to play, with one abstention. Upshaw spoke to Tagliabue and relayed what had happened. He made sure Tagliabue understood just how vehemently opposed to playing the games were the players in New York and even those in Washington, where the third jetliner had crashed into the Pentagon. Opposition isn’t the correct word; the league would have had a mutiny on its hands.

Buffalo player representative Phil Hansen remembers the speeches by Strahan and Mawae and how they moved everyone.

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