Following is a sampling of commentary related to Bobby Bowden's choice of a 9/11-themed "Let's Roll" motto for FSU's 2002 season. Click the newspaper name link to read full story.
As the first prisoners of war began to stagger back from Vietnam in the early '70s, my friend and colleague Jeff Greenfield was driving around one of the many unidentifiable outskirts of Los Angeles when his gaze fell on one of those giant Southern California gas stations you see everywhere, with a movie-marquee-style billboard at its center. Jeff swears the proprietors had posted this message of homecoming and tribute:
"Free Lube Jobs for All POWs."
Damning with faint respect is probably as old as the country itself. If David McCullough's next biography informs me that one of the few remaining unprofiled Founding Fathers had, in 1775, christened his plow oxen "Lexington" and "Concord," I wouldn't be a bit surprised. Appropriating the transcendent for our own personal use -- whether to make a buck or enhance the meaning of our lives -- is all-American.
Still, there is something over-the-top about Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden's selection of his team's 2002 slogan, "Let's Roll."
Some folks are offended that the Florida State Seminoles have adopted "Let's Roll" as their seasonal slogan. What's offensive is that some folks are so easily offended.
There can be no higher form of heroism than that of the passengers on Flight 93. In death, they surely enabled others to live. Todd Beamer's last overheard words -- "Let's roll" -- have come to represent all the sacrifices of Sept. 11. So here we are, in the run-up to the anniversary of that dark day, bickering about what's an appropriate tribute and what isn't.
Bruce Springsteen bases an album on Sept. 11 and is asked to play live on "Today" and is splashed on Time's cover. Bobby Bowden prints Todd Beamer's words on a T-shirt and gets ripped for misuse. The wayfaring correspondent Keith Olbermann, fancying himself the conscience of a nation, calls FSU players "stupid" and fears that the noble phrase will be abused by "drunken fans." To which this correspondent says: Whoa.
There have been a lot of bad sports slogans through the years.
I am still particularly fond of "We're Buccaneers!" This rallying cry, used by Tampa Bay's lovable losers in the late '80s, turned into a running joke. They blew another one? Of course they did. They're Buccaneers!
But while that slogan was bad in an amusing way, this one is not.
Let's roll.
Those, of course, are the words that a GTE operator heard Todd Beamer yell shortly before he and fellow passengers forced United Airlines Flight 93 to crash, not into the White House or the Capitol, but a Pennsylvania field.
Those are the words that Lisa Beamer, who was pregnant with their third child at the time, has said perfectly represent her husband.
We'll never know what Todd Beamer's final thoughts were on Sept. 11.
Did he know his airplane had become a terrorist missile heading for the U.S. Capitol? Was he thinking about his pregnant wife, whom he'd tried desperately to reach on the phone?
About all we know for sure was that the GTE operator heard Beamer say, "Are you guys ready? OK, let's roll." A few minutes later, United Flight 93 crashed into a field in western Pennsylvania.
We assume the passengers foiled the terrorists' plans, so Beamer's final words became America's rallying cry in the war on terrorism. Now they have become the motto for FSU's football season.
"That's what we're going by," Bobby Bowden said at media day. "We've worked hard ... let's roll."
No way this should be a sports slogan. Not with what the words represent. But here comes the Florida State football team into a new season brandishing a shiny new motto printed on T-shirts and rolling off the tongues of football-playing babes:
"Let's roll."
As in what Todd Beamer said on Flight 93 just before attacking the 9/11 terrorists. As in the phrase now a part of America's patriotic dictionary. As in a message that has no place -- none -- in the sports world.
Right is right. Wrong is wrong. And Florida State commandeering these words as a means to inspire a few football wins is unquestionably and tastelessly wrong.
