How Former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue Helped Create a Sense of Unity in America After the 9/11 Tragedy

On September 11th, 2001, the morning after the New York Giants lost a Monday Night Football game to the Denver Broncos, a pair of planes struck the Twin Towers, altering the course of both the season and the nation forever. While the team’s return home that Tuesday morning would, thankfully, be uneventful, their arrival at the airport proved to be a chilling one.

According to the team’s owner, John Mara, the team unknowingly crossed paths with both the terrorists and the victims of the catastrophe just moments prior to the catastrophe.

“I remember pulling into the gate at Newark Airport and just noticing another plane right next to us as we pulled into the gate. I found out later that that was Flight 93.”

The Giants’ general manager at the time, Ernie Accorsi, corroborated Mara’s story, noting that they had unknowingly crossed paths with the doomed souls that day. “We walked right by the people boarding that flight and the terrorists.”

In light of both the tragedy itself and its impact on the nation as a whole, the NFL postponed Week 2 of the regular season. At the time, the general consensus was best reflected by Vinny Testaverde’s assertion that “This wasn’t the time to play football.”

When play finally resumed on September 23rd, the sense of patriotism was overwhelming. Then commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, was on a mission to showcase the unity and resiliency of the American people, and boy, did he succeed.

American flags, face paint, and chants of “U.S.A.” dawned every set of stands throughout the league, and not a single rendition of the national anthem ever failed to produce tears. According to New York’s governor at the time, George Pataki, “The NFL did it in the right way. It helped to create a sense of unity in America among Americans.”

The first NFL game to be played in our post-9/11 world featured the New England Patriots and the New York Jets. The contest itself proved to be a rugged, low-scoring affair that produced a total of 29 first downs throughout its entirety.

Curtis Martin’s eight-yard rushing touchdown in the third quarter proved to be the first and only trip that a player would make to the endzone. Nevertheless, the Jets took home a 10-3 victory in what was arguably one of the most important games in the history of the franchise.

One member of the New York roster described the scene as being “just beautiful.”

“I had never seen so much Patriotism and so many people coming together as one… The Patriots were cheering for us… They had the firemen out there. They had the policemen out there. Everybody had on their FDNY and NYPD hats, it was just a beautiful thing.”

A unified America seems like a foreign concept in today’s divisive times, but stories such as these help to remind us of a time when political disagreements came second to kindness and human decency.