Thursday, Sept. 13, 2001

Kudos to the NFL

Scratching this weekend’s games was the only way to go

By Keith Schleiden, Managing editor

Football? While it’s my job, and my passion, it hasn’t been a part of my moment-to-moment thought processes.

The NFL has announced that this weekend’s games will not be played. It is the first time the league has scratched a weekend’s slate of games.

And in my opinion, this was the only decision that the league could have arrived at. I’ve heard people say that deciding whether or not to play these games could not be screwed up. It was the type of decision that couldn’t be right or wrong.

That’s wrong. The only correct decision here was to cancel or postpone the games.

As I write this, I recall a press conference that was held in New York just three hours ago. It wasn’t about football. It was about life and death, terror and tragedy, and mourning — the latter of which has barely even begun. Mayor Rudy Giuliani announced that there are currently 4,763 people missing in the rubble that was once the World Trade Center. The official death toll in New York had risen to 94, and workers were finding more body parts than intact corpses.

In Washington, 70 bodies had been recovered from the Pentagon, with another 200 people unaccounted for.

And there is even a question as to whether the NFL should be staging its weekly shows this week? Uh-uh.

This weekend, no one should be celebrating touchdowns. There should be absolutely no trash-talking. I can’t even imagine a stadium filled with screaming fans while there are millions of Americans grieving.

I don’t care what the ramifications are here. A 15-game regular-season schedule for all NFL teams, except for the Chargers, who would have 16, is a possibility. It may be a logistical nightmare, but who cares? Figuring out playoff tiebreakers is a minor inconvenience compared to the other things that are happening now in our nation.

Putting off the Week Two games until the end of the season and canceling a round of the wild-card playoffs is another option. I will accept that scenario as well.

Whatever the league decides to do with the rest of the schedule, I will have no problem. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue demonstrated to me, in deciding not to play this weekend, that he is a man of great sense and compassion.

The NFL deserves to be commended for making the right choice and allowing the public to concentrate on much bigger issues than football. 

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2001 - 2002 Season