AP News Alerts from 9/11

The usual Tuesday afternoon softball (Georgia is weird) got canceled but football practice went on the same as always. So I went down there, already feeling like a speck of fly shit in the greater scheme, and asked the coach if he thought there would be a game to prepare for.

“I’m sure there will be. 50 million Chinese don’t give a damn whether we play or not.”

And sure enough, the GHSA was determined to go full Pete Rozelle until late morning Friday. Once they pulled the plug, virtually all of the independent school league did the same.

Virtually.

As far as I know I covered the only high school football game in Georgia that Friday. Some church academy south of Atlanta was halfway down the road to Valdosta when the word came down to cancel and they didn’t want to scrub the game because it was a stopover on the way to a school-wide Orlando trip.

So I wrote it up the best I knew how, heavy on emotions and quotes about the gravity of the moment and the bare minimum of play by play shoved to the bottom. I may have even violated the sacred rule about putting the final score in the lede.

But I still felt like half a speck.

 

The Port Authority wanted to rent entire floors and we only had half a floor, so out we went. Since I saw it I can also report that the other half of our floor had never been finished -- it was still bare concrete and girders with fireproofing with a litte construction light hanging down. I was told there were many floors like that throughout the towers. I later learned that the PA never did find a tenant for our space.

 

The Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League (WPIAL), in its infinite wisdom, did not cancel the games but moved them to the next day - Saturday - as if this was some gesture of deep reverence. Keep in mind, the NFL and college had canceled all games for that week.

 

What the GHSA did was tack that week’s games onto the end of the season and push the playoffs back a week (no small feat when the semifinals were at the Georgia Dome). But that didn’t work for almighty Valdosta, who was set to host Lincoln High out of Tallahassee and didn’t want to lose the gate. So they had Monday night football that week and a short turnaround to the next game.

That one didn’t seem as tone deaf to me for whatever reason. The mood was still pretty tense (it’s an Air Force town and we all knew what was coming next) but the shock was wearing off and people were ready for a temporary distraction by then.

 

You'll never not convince me the reason the WPIAL did not do the same thing was due to the availability of newly-opened Heinz Field, which was the home of the Steelers and Pitt football.

 

I still had high school golf practice that day. The dumbest two hours of my life. Standing over a five footer and you’d just think, “What the hell are we doing out here? It’s not even a match. It’s practice. I’m going to be drafted into a Holy War in a few months anyways.”

 

Bolted into the office when I was woken up with a phonecall about the news as it was happening. Designer the 1A for our "extra" edition of my newspaper that day -- the plate of which I have framed at my house. UNDER SEIGE was the headline in about 140p.

Our sports section that night was reduced to four pages, and filled with closures/postponements from our area and around the country.

rb

 

And the best headline of them all ...



Memorable headlines: BASTARDS!