9/11 impact on sports.

Jordan’s return was not the only big story on September 10. Barry Bonds was chasing the home run record. Venus and Serena Williams had just made history the previous night, playing each other in a Grand Slam final for the first time.

And little did anybody know that the next day, any interest in Jordan, Bonds, the Williams sisters, or anything — not only in the world of sports — would be wiped away in the most stunning morning in the history of the United States.

Immediate aftermath.
Anyone rolling out of bed on the West Coast that morning who happened to turn the dial to SportsCenter was not greeted by the highlights of the previous night’s Monday Night Football game. Instead, he or she saw live simulcast coverage of the attacks on America on ABC. Most cable networks either switched to news coverage or went dark altogether. “The Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC News commissioned sports net ESPN, Viacom-owned CBS News drafted sister networks VH1 and MTV, and Fox News Channel recruited regional sports channel Fox Sports Net and National Geographic Channel to cover the attacks“. SportsCenter that night was hosted by Trey Wingo and veteran Bob Ley. The somber edition of the show focused on the impact of the attacks on sports.

That impact, like the impact of 9/11 on every other aspect of American life, was severe. Major League Baseball acted swiftly, canceling all fifteen scheduled games on that day, and the day after. As for when games would resume, the decision was more difficult. “Baseball, I can assure you, will only do what is helpful to this country in any way, shape, form or manner,” said commissioner Bud Selig, “We want to be helpful, we want to be sensitive. I generally move very cautiously, and I can assure you, I will move with a great deal of caution.” Meanwhile, then-NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue sent a memo to teams “telling them it was ‘premature’ to say what action the league will take on playing games this weekend“. The PGA Tour postponed the first round of the American Express Championship, while the LPGA Tour decided to go ahead with its tournament as scheduled. Several golfers called on the upcoming Ryder Cup to be postponed, while another major international competition also found itself in jeopardy.

The 2002 Winter Olympics were slated for Salt Lake City, Utah. The attacks of 9/11 made everyone think twice about having a major worldwide event in an American city. “The attacks ‘raise the stakes on Olympic security. Where in the past, many Olympic planners tried to downplay such a threat striking the Olympics, the possibility was suddenly pushed to the forefront’“. Utah Governor Mike Leavitt maintained that the Games would go on, while Salt Lake Olympic Committee president Mitt Romney assurred that Salt Lake City would not turn “into an armed camp. … I don’t think we’re going to look like Israel, with Uzis in the airport.”

Security was not just an issue for international events. An attack the magnitude of 9/11 suddenly made any large gathering a major security risk. NFL Commissioner Tagliabue was slated to meet with government officials “to help him decide whether the league would be putting its players, coaches and fans at risk by playing this weekend.” The subject of playing games that weekend became a relatively heated one over the next several days. One issue at hand was whether or not the security force required to maintain the safety at games would take away from the rescue effort at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Then-Arizona Cardinal Pat Tillman: “Where could police do the most good, guarding a football stadium, where you know security will be heightened, or sifting through rubble searching for survivors?“

Games go dark.
As time began to pass, decisions became more clear. On Thursday, September 13, the PGA Tour canceled four of its events, including the American Express Championship. The same day, Bud Selig announced his intention to make up the canceled games from the 11th, 12th and 13th. The games were slated to be made up at the end of the season, which would result in “the World Series, which is scheduled to begin Oct. 20, being played in November, which would be unprecedented.”

There was no unified decision from the NCAA; instead, individual conferences elected whether or not to play. The Pac-10 was the first to postpone games for the weekend, while the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and MAC conferences decided to play. David Barron of the Houston Chronicle noted that “[i]n virtually all cases, leagues that do not have financially lucrative championship games in December decided not to play Saturday. Leagues that sponsor the multimillion dollar games … elected to play.”

But more than the decisions of baseball, college football or golf, the decision by the NFL was the one of most importance. The NFL’s decision not to play games that weekend had a ripple effect throughout the sports media industry. “At a certain point playing our games can contribute to the healing process,” explained Commissioner Tagliabue, “Just not at this time.” The decision of the NFL to cancel games came partially thanks to the players. While “as many as half the league’s 31 owners on Wednesday wanted the games to go on“, some players, particularly on the Jets and Giants, were “apparently ready to boycott“, and forfeit, the games. “NFL player reps voted 17-11 against playing” that weekend, essentially saving the NFL from making a potentially poor decision. “All indications are Tagliabue was a bureaucrat who wanted to make the wrong call but was prevented from doing so by players prepared to boycott the games.”

The NFL’s move to postpone games essentially forced other holdouts to do the same. The SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, MAC, Conference USA, Mountain West and WAC all canceled their upcoming games, less than 48 hours before they were scheduled to begin. “[O]nce the N.F.L. and baseball made their decision,” remarked SEC Commissioner Roy Kramer, “we decided to join all the major sports in postponing athletic events.” Major League Baseball, which had already canceled several days worth of games, postponed games on Saturday and Sunday, deciding to push the entire season back a week. NASCAR and IRL postponed weekend races; the reason for NASCAR’ decision was partly cosmetic: “[B]ased on what we’ve gone through the last few months with the Earnhardt situation,” commented FOX analyst Darrell Waltrip, “we couldn’t stand another PR disaster.” The NASCAR decision forced the IRL cancellation, as events in both series were to take place at Texas Motor Speedway that weekend. After NASCAR canceled its Truck Series race at TMS, officials “‘didn’t want to proceed with only half their weekend show’… So TMS execs ‘initiated talks with the IRL, leading to a rescheduling’ of the race to October 6, the day after the truck series will make up its date.” The NBA, which was not in season, also saw several events canceled; Michael Jordan decided to foregoe a planned news conference to announce his return, while the league canceled exhibition tours overseas. Major League Soccer perhaps took the most drastic step of any league, canceling the rest of its regular season. Lost revenue from the canceled games for MLS was “in excess of several million dollars.” The LPGA was the last sports league to cancel its event, finally dropping the Safeway Classic.

With so many sports going dark, sports media outlets such as ESPN, FSN and CNN-SI found themselves without content. CNN canceled its sports related program “Sports Tonight”, which likely led to the departure of Fred Hickman from the network. ESPN, meanwhile, was dealing with the lack of sports on the airwaves. “[I]n order to fill ESPN’s vacant hours, the network is reaching for news ‘reflecting how the sports world has been affected by all this.’” The first of those programs was the SportsCenter that aired on 9/11. There was a “soberly uplifting” debate within ESPN in regards to whether or not to air SportsCenter that day. Bob Ley: “I felt then that as horrible and transcendent as the events of Tuesday were, we had a responsibility to report what we could, with a proper reverence for our negligible relevance to the larger story. … I don’t know if we succeeded. … I worry that my advocacy for us to report magnified sports’ minimal purchase on this story, and trivialized the horror and sacrifice“. Many outlets praised ESPN’s coverage, with some calling it a “landmark week for SportsCenter“, others saying ESPN had “two of its best days” immediately following the attacks, and others crediting Ley and Chris Berman with doing “some of their finest work“. FSN, meanwhile, took a “toned-down approach … Our programs will be less edgy. The tone will be more reverential.” Other networks mimiced FSN; ABC Sports offical Mark Mandel: “All of our college football telecasts will have a different tone, and [‘MNF’], too. … The tone will be sympathetic to the mood of the country. Dennis Miller will not be joking about what happened last week.”

Effects on the then-near future.
The dawn of a new week saw sports leagues attempting to come to grips with their decisions from the previous week. The NFL now needed to figure out how to continue its schedule, while baseball and other sports returned to the field. Initial reports on how the NFL would conduct its schedule centered on the likelihood that the league would play sixteen weeks and eliminate the Wildcard games — which would involve trimming the number of playoff teams from six to four. This format was deemed a “95 to 100 percent” certainty by NFLPA head Gene Upshaw, and was widely reported. The league would have to rebate its television partners, at that time, ABC, CBS and FOX, “$70-75M in rights fees if the wild-card weekend is canceled, as each wild-card game is valued at $17-21M.”

The league seemed to back away from that idea in the next few days. “[T]he league is considering moving every date in the postseason back one week, including the Super Bowl in New Orleans from January 27 to February 3, 2002.” Rescheduling the Super Bowl, like so many other events in sports in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, would be unprecedented. Moving the Super Bowl back a week, but keeping it in New Orleans, would require “‘the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) convention moving’ its February 3 date.” Because of that uncertainty, the league thought of other options, such as “playing the conference championship games in New Orleans on the Super Bowl date and ‘mov[ing] the Super Bowl a week later to another site‘” or even playing “the wild-card games in midweek [January 8-9], perhaps even in prime time.” If the Super Bowl were to move from New Orleans, other cities would have to play host to the biggest event in sports; “Pasadena, Miami and Tampa have been discussed as possible hosts“, though “overriding sentiment remains keeping the game in New Orleans“.

That sentiment led to the NFL looking for a way to appease NADA, mostly through monetary inducements. The cost of moving the NADA convention would extend into several million dollars. When the NFL was finally able to agree with NADA, the league paid “$7.5[M] to cover any losses and potential liabilities from the flip-flopping of dates.” The amount paid, which Saints owner Tom Benson expected to “could double to $15[M] to help cover expenses and losses“, was still far less than the $60 to $75 million dollars the league would have had to pay its television partners had games been eliminated. Thanks to the deal with NADA, the NFL was able to play a full postseason in 2002; the New England Patriots defeated the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI on February 3, 2002.

Baseball saw initial attendance drops after the attacks. Four home teams who played on the first night back from the six-day hiatus saw double-digit percentage drops in their attendance from September 10, and attendance remained poor for the next several days, as leaguewide numbers fell 13%. Despite the attendance drops, ratings increased on TBS and ESPN, as ratings for the first Monday of games were up 36% and 30% from the season average on each network, respectively. One Turner Sports official noted, “I think people were looking for a diversion.”

Conclusion.
The events of September 11, 2001, had a profound impact on every facet of American life. And while the impact on sports is of least consequence by comparison to the impact on foreign policy, the military and the country as a whole, the days and months following the attacks gave the most prominent leaders in sports tough and unprecedented decisions to make.