On the Spot

Paul Tagliabue wrestled with whether the NFL should play on, and his decree shaped the sports weekend

By Peter King

Issue date: September 24, 2001

After 14 hours of meetings ended just before 10 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 12, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue strode purposefully out of the league's offices at 280 Park Avenue and into the cool Manhattan night -- and the smell of smoke. Tagliabue coughed occasionally as he walked, his lungs collecting particulates from a barely visible low cloud, wafting like the London fog four miles uptown from ground zero. He noticed that his exposed skin was starting to collect particles. Although he may have had the weight of the suddenly inconsequential sports world on his shoulders, with the clock ticking while he decided whether to play Sunday's and Monday's games, Tagliabue had another matter to tend to first: the birthday dinner of his wife, Chan, at the midtown apartment of their son, Drew, a celebration that had started without him a couple of hours earlier.

After dinner Chan and Paul walked the 23 blocks uptown to their East Side apartment. He coughed some more. His eyes burned. He surveyed the surreal scene -- streets nearly empty, air painfully thick, a palpable uncertainty hanging over the future of New York and the country -- and said to himself, We're not playing football this weekend.

That decision, unanimously supported by his kitchen cabinet of three owners and Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Association, the next morning, gave a waffling sports world its sense of direction. America would pray, not play. In the wake of Tagliabue's announcement, Major League Baseball postponed games through the weekend, the Big 12 and the Southeastern Conference postponed all weekend sports events, the NHL ordered that no preseason games be played until Monday, NASCAR and the Indy Racing League postponed their Sunday races, the LPGA canceled its tournament, and Major League Soccer canceled its remaining six games of the regular season.

Last Saturday afternoon, with a nip in the Manhattan air and perfect football weather up and down the East Coast, Tagliabue sat in the same conference room in which he had discussed his options with league executives and owners days earlier, and he talked about his walk home on Wednesday night. "We got to 59th and Fifth Avenue," he recalled. "It was so bad, so eerie. I saw two young cops on the corner. I went up to them and said, 'You guys are doing an incredible job.' I shook their hands."

Tagliabue paused. His bottom lip quivered, just as President Bush's had on Thursday when he choked up while talking about whipping terrorism. It wasn't the first time last week that the iron commissioner, a man who often seems so dismissive and cold in the public eye, fought to keep his emotions in check. During a 90-minute interview with SI, he explained how he came to his decision.

TUESDAY When the second plane hit the World Trade Center, Tagliabue was in his 17th-floor office on a conference call with the United Way. When the Pentagon was hit a short time later, the parties abruptly ended the call. Upshaw phoned Tagliabue from Washington to see if everyone in New York was safe and assure him that the NFLPA staff was O.K. "At some point -- not now -- we need to start thinking about the games," Tagliabue told Upshaw.

First, however, there was the matter of tending to the league's staff of more than 400, spread over five floors. Who knew what might happen next? At 11:10 a.m., Tagliabue appointed floor captains, fire wardens and an individual to oversee a place-to-stay system in the event that commuting employees were stuck in Manhattan overnight or longer.

Like so many other businesses, the NFL also had to address the possibility that staffers might have family members who were injured, dead or lost in the rubble. The league would have two reported missing: Thomas Collins, whose wife, Julia, works in NFL Properties, and Diane Lipari, whose husband, Ed Tighe, is an NFL Management Council lawyer. Julia was in Denver on business. Ed had bolted from his office and gone to the disaster site. While he was explaining to a police officer why he had to get through a barricade, the south tower -- in which Lipari worked, on the 92nd floor -- collapsed. Tighe returned to his office and began sobbing uncontrollably. "Pray for a miracle, Ed," Tagliabue told him, and he, too, began to cry. When the commissioner learned that a rosary was to be said every half hour around the corner at St. Patrick's Cathedral, he told employees that attending the prayer service would be the best thing they could do for Tighe. Many staffers, including Tagliabue, attended a 5:30 mass with Tighe.

In the middle of the tumult Tagliabue took 10 minutes to sketch out what he considered the league's alternatives for the coming weekend. Although he had his aides check into the possibility of moving the New York Giants' game against the Green Bay Packers from Giants Stadium to Lambeau Field, he never intended that the Giants or the New York Jets play so soon after the disaster. His options: 1) cancel Week 2 games and play a 15-game regular season; 2) postpone the games, throw out the wild-card round of the playoffs on Jan. 5 and 6, and reschedule the Week 2 games for those days; 3) give the Jets, Giants, Washington Redskins and possibly Pittsburgh Steelers the week off, but play the other 11 or 12 games on Monday or Tuesday; 4) schedule the 11 or 12 games at a time on Sunday so as not to interfere with a possible national religious service; 5) start those games at the same time on Sunday, 2 p.m. EDT, giving the U.S. what might be viewed as a three-hour break from the tragedy. However, the networks could not guarantee that they would televise any games. Tagliabue would discuss these options in a conference call with a select group of owners the following day.

That night an owner, whom Tagliabue won't identify, called him at home to say the NFL had to play on. Terrorists, the owner said, would win if the NFL went dark. Upshaw called too, saying the 31 player reps had scheduled a conference call for 9 p.m. on Wednesday to get their feelings on whether they thought the games should be played. In truth, only one vote counted, and the man who had it tossed and turned most of Tuesday night.

WEDNESDAY In his Washington office, shortly after 9 a.m., Upshaw fielded his first call from a concerned player. "We can't play, Gene," Jacksonville Jaguars wideout Keenan McCardell said. "We hear what the coaches are saying in meetings, but we can't focus." Another call, from Buffalo Bills player rep Phil Hansen, landed in Upshaw's voice mail: "Lots of our players are saying we shouldn't play, out of respect for our country and our countrymen." Upshaw called Tagliabue and said, "Paul, this thing is picking up steam."

Players on the New York teams sounded rebellious. "I don't understand why we're here today. I think all games should be canceled this weekend," said Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde.

On the other hand, Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick said the league should play. A Bush aide told the league's government liaison, senior vice president Joe Browne, that the NFL had to make its own decision. In two conference calls with Tagliabue, league owners were split: Don't let the terrorists control us, some argued; the nation must have time to grieve, said others. Tagliabue got his best advice of the day from New York governor George Pataki, who through an intermediary told the commissioner, Yes, life must go on, but not necessarily with parties and football games so soon after such a huge loss of life. Some owners could sense that Tagliabue was leaning toward a dark Sunday when he told them on one of the conference calls, "This is not the Kennedy assassination. This is not Pearl Harbor. It's worse."

Early in the evening Ravens owner Art Modell called with the same advice he had given Tagliabue's predecessor, Pete Rozelle, in 1963 when Rozelle struggled with whether to play games two days after JFK was killed. "Paul," Modell said, "I'm imploring you to cancel the games."

On the players' conference call, representatives from the New York teams were passionate about not suiting up. "It's one thing to see it on TV," Giants cornerback Jason Sehorn said. "It's another thing, every day, to look from our practice field and see the towers gone. And it's another thing to even consider playing while they're still pulling people out of the rubble." The player reps voted 17-11 (two teams weren't represented and one abstained) for Tagliabue to call off the games.

THURSDAY New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft was in favor of playing until he flipped on the TV at 4 a.m. in his suburban Boston home. By Sunday, he reasoned, people would be yearning for a release. "But when I saw that Mayor Giuliani had ordered 6,000 body bags, I thought we should give people time to grieve," he said.

Tagliabue awoke at 4:45. He walked into his kitchen, sat down at the table, took out a legal pad, thought for a few minutes and wrote these words: "This week we have witnessed despicable acts. Within our NFL family, loved ones are missing. Such events try our hearts and souls. These events and experiences will deeply affect all of us -- not just for now but for years, lifetimes, generations. As a nation and as individuals, we will respond in many ways on many fronts. Supporting, respecting, grieving, learning, becoming closer, more resolute, stronger. We will carry on--not move on and forget -- but carry on.... We will not play NFL games this weekend."

Later that morning Tagliabue got the news from Upshaw about the player vote the previous night. It didn't surprise him. During a conference call that included his kitchen cabinet -- Upshaw, Giants co-owner Wellington Mara, Steelers owner Dan Rooney and Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson -- he asked Upshaw to brief the others on the players' stance. Then he made his announcement. "We're not playing," Tagliabue said at 10:45 a.m.

Three minutes after the league informed the Associated Press of its decision, rumors of a bomb threat at a building across the street from league offices resulted in the evacuation of the NFL's building as well.

EPILOGUE The league would decide soon enough to cut out the wild-card playoffs and use that January weekend to make up the Week 2 schedule. That would mean a reduction from six to four in the number of playoff teams for each conference, but that isn't much of a sacrifice, considering that since the NFL went to a 12-team playoff format in 1990, no fifth or sixth seed has reached the Super Bowl, and only two have reached a conference championship game. Shrinking the playoff field would normally send coaches and owners over the edge. Last weekend nary a negative peep was heard.

A more immediate concern was security. Last Saturday, Tagliabue met with NFL director of security Milt Ahlerich to discuss provisions for the resumption of games on Sept. 23. He also asked Lew Merletti, the Cleveland Browns' vice president of stadium operations and security and a former director of the Secret Service, to serve on a new security task force. Tagliabue said the league had learned valuable security lessons over the last decade, during the gulf war in 1991 and following the bombings of the World Trade Center in '93 and the federal building in Oklahoma City in '95. "I'm very, very sure our stadiums will be secure for the players and the fans," he said.

He was asked if he could envision any scenario in which the league would not play this weekend. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I can envision things, but I don't care to go into them. They're for the President to worry about."

"When I saw that Mayor Giuliani had ordered 6,000 body bags, I thought we should give people time to grieve," said Kraft.

Issue date: September 24, 2001