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The best timeout in NFL history Posted: Monday September 17, 2001 1:14 PM
My one overriding memory of the week that changed all of our
lives:
Friday afternoon, just before 4 p.m., I'm walking from the Sports
Illustrated Building in midtown, where I'd just taped a segment for CNN, to
my car in a garage on 54th Street. My cell phone rings. It's Gene Upshaw,
calling from Washington. We'd been hitting and missing each other for a
couple of days, and we settled into a discussion about the NFL player
representatives' conference call late Wednesday night, when the players voted to
recommend that no games be played this past weekend. "Do you want to call
me back when you get somewhere you can talk?" Upshaw says. No, I say,
afraid of missing him for another day or two. I take a folded-up piece of paper
from my pocket and set up a makeshift desk on a USA Today box. It is
breezy, the wind blowing down Broadway on one of the most beautiful almost-fall
days ever, a couple of hours after a rainstorm. My right elbow anchors the paper
to the top of the white box while I interview Upshaw for a couple of minutes.
"I have never been so proud in this job as I was Wednesday night," he
tells me. "There was no talk about labor contracts, no arguing about Nike
or Reebok, no raised voices. Only respectful discussion. Everyone's point was
heard, and --" Huge airplane noise comes from the south, from the disaster
site three miles downtown. Louder. Louder. My heart leaps. "Hang on,"
I say. I look up. An F-16 fighter plane, I believe, is directly overhead. I take
half a second to look down to the street. Foot traffic is lighter than usual,
but I am stunned to see 90 percent of the people stopped in their tracks,
staring at the plane flying north over the city. And then, as I go back to
Upshaw, I write down: "4:02 p.m. F-16. Wow." I look at the people on
Broadway starting to walk again, and I see several
smile.
I heard from a longtime acquaintance and friend Sunday, sitting in my office at
home, finishing my piece for the magazine. He scouts for an NFL team. I'd
explained on a radio talk show in his town, far from New York, why the games
shouldn't have been played on Sunday. I talked about being at the Giants'
practice Friday, about how a fire drill in their practice bubble nearly made the
players jump out of their shoes and how they bolted practice early. And about
how I walked out of the bubble with offensive line coach Jim McNally,
and how he pointed to the Meadowlands' commuter parking lot and said: "See
that? There were cars in there overnight. Guys who didn't come home Tuesday.
They got on the bus to New York Tuesday morning and never came back." And
about how the players came to practice Thursday, worked outside, and couldn't
take their eyes off the smoldering ruin of the World Trade Center nine miles
away. The scout said he then understood why the league couldn't play the
games.
I spent some time with Paul Tagliabue Saturday, and there is no
question his decision was influenced by living and working in Manhattan. Good
for him, I say. You could smell the fire from downtown at NFL headquarters on
Wednesday. Tagliabue went to church Friday morning, and it was raining, and the
minister said: "That is cosmic weeping." I have never seen Tagliabue
so human. Once during our conversation he got choked up. (I'm not one to push my
own stories, but I would recommend you read what I wrote about Tagliabue's
decision in SI this week, just to get another, more human perspective of what
Tagliabue is
like.)
We sat in the same conference room on the 17th floor of the NFL offices on Park
Avenue that he'd used as a command post of sorts last week, listening on
conference calls to the owners who wanted to play the games and the owners who
did not. (There were more of the latter.) At one point during the discussions,
Giants co-owner Wellington Mara, who Tagliabue, rightly, considers the
conscience of the league, was talking about his players seeing smoke where there
were once towers, and about the team noticing the cars that would never be
driven by their owners again in the commuter lot. But selfless man that he is,
Mara told Tagliabue: "I might be too close to this. I'm only one team. You
have to decide what's best for the entire league." That's how Tagliabue
felt most of Wednesday as he considered his
alternatives.
Tagliabue told me a story about calling his brother in Ridgewood, N.J., about 15
miles from the disaster, Wednesday morning, to check in and make sure everyone
in his family was OK. They were, but it turns out four close friends of his wife
from the Ridgewood Women's Club never came home. Last fall Tagliabue joined
former Giants Harry Carson and George Martin for an event at
that club. The grief just kept coming, all
week.
I realize I would have been affected in a different way if the disaster had
happened in another town far, far away. But I hope I would have had the
sensitivity to appreciate the hurt and suffering that comes with 5,500 people,
or some such unimaginable number, dying at the hands of a
terrorist.
After I finished working Sunday, my wife and I took our golden retrievers, Woody
and Bailey, for a walk. Woody is 11 1/2, Bailey is 2. The walk was too long for
Woody, of course, and too short for Bailey. Then we watched TV for a while,
laughing at Myron Cope on an NFL Films program-filler on the
2000 Steelers on ESPN. Then we sat on our deck and talked. Then our daughter
Mary Beth came home and we ate Chinese food. Then she did homework and we
watched 60 Minutes and The Natural. I fell asleep on the
couch.
I didn't think about the games once. I didn't miss
them.
This morning, a UPS envelope arrived from the Indianapolis Colts. My credential
for the Broncos-Colts game, the game that never was. Then I picked up the phone
to make flight arrangements to Kansas City. I'll be going there this week,
unless the magazine's plans change, to cover the Giants and the Chiefs. Life
goes on, after a pause. The way it
should.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL and appears
regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated and CNN's NFL Preview. Click here to send a question to his
NFL Mailbag.
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