Paul Tagliabue shares behind-the-scenes challenges of NFL's pause after 9/11: 'We're not playing'

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As far as Paul Tagliabue was concerned, there was never any question that the NFL would suspend its schedule in the wake of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, as the nation mourned the victims and processed the gravity of the moment.

Yet getting consensus among NFL owners and players to shut down the sport for a week was hardly automatic, the former league commissioner said, as the 20th anniversary of the tragedy approaches.

“I said on Wednesday, ‘We’re not playing. What we need to do now is get a consensus for why. We don’t want to make it look like we’re divided, and we don’t want to make it look like we can be cowed by terrorists,’" Tagliabue told USA TODAY Sports, recalling internal conversations with team owners, league officials and NFL Players Association leadership in the aftermath of the attacks, which occurred on a Tuesday. 

“By Wednesday night, Thursday morning, we worked it out.”

Tagliabue’s leadership amid the national crisis was significant, even though it seems evident that the options were limited. His predecessor, the late Pete Rozelle, maintained that the biggest regret from his reign as commissioner was the decision to play games on the weekend following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. 

'Worse than Pearl Harbor'

After 9/11, Tagliabue was certainly reminded of that history, in addition to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt urging Major League Baseball to proceed with its season in the months following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 that ignited World War II.

“I said, 'This is worse than Pearl Harbor. They took an instrument of daily civilian life — a commercial airplane — and converted it into an intercontinental ballistic missile. This is unprecedented. Whoever did it, we can’t play football next week,’ " Tagliabue recalled. “But there were differences of opinion that had to be resolved.”

Tagliabue was struck by the split that resulted in NFLPA team reps voting 17-11 to suspend games for the weekend after the attacks.

“The Jets and Giants didn’t want to play. The reasons were obvious,” Tagliabue said, alluding to the proximity of the teams to the site of the Twin Towers in New York City.

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The Giants players could see the smoke from the towers from their practice facility at Giants Stadium, where the parking lot was used as an emergency staging location. Washington players had similar sentiments, given the attack on the Pentagon. And Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 crashed, resonated with the Steelers and Eagles.

“Jason Sehorn, Michael Strahan, Wayne Chrebet, they were very outspoken about not playing,” Tagliabue said of the New York players. “But when you went to San Diego and Seattle, there was a different attitude. Even Dallas had a different attitude.”

Then there were the team owners.

Competing views from owners

While Tagliabue said there was strong sentiment to respect the lives that were lost and recognize that the tragedy “transcends any form or entertainment,” some NFL owners had to be convinced otherwise.

“The other group was, ‘You’ve got to play. In Israel they play through terrorist attacks. The (terrorists) come in and gun down 20 civilians with a machine gun. They sweep up the street, have a funeral the next day and nothing changes. The streets are open for business. If you stop, you create the impression for the enemy that you don’t have the will to fight.’ 

"So, those were the two competing views. I said, ‘There’s no precedent here, whether it’s Kennedy, Israel, World War II. In my opinion, this is worse than all of them. So, we’re not going to play.’ "

Tagliabue, recently inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, remembers that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft — one of the league’s most influential power brokers — was among those who initially wanted to play the games the week after the attacks.

“Kraft was a pretty strong advocate for what they do in Israel,” Tagliabue said. “We were going to make a decision on Thursday morning. He told me later that the night before, like at 1 o’clock in the morning, he was watching the news. (Former New York City mayor) Rudy Giuliani was on the late news saying they were ordering 6,000 body bags.

“Kraft said, 'That’s when I changed my mind.’ "

The NFL wound up suspending its schedule for a week, then adjusted on the back end to push back the Super Bowl for a week. When the games resumed, Tagliabue and NFLPA chief Gene Upshaw chose to attend the Giants’ game at Kansas City as a symbolic gesture.

“The Giants came out, and it was the biggest round of applause in the history of Arrowhead Stadium. And it was for the visiting team," Tagliabue said.

For Tagliabue, the 9/11 attacks also served as an eerie reminder of a role he had early in his career. During the late 1960s, Tagliabue worked at the Pentagon in the office of the Secretary of Defense. He worked on a study that examined the intelligence capabilities needed to prevent an enemy from smuggling nuclear weapons into the United States for the purpose of a major attack.

“I worked for six or nine months on the study,” Tagliabue said. “The title of the study was, 'The Clandestine Introduction of Nuclear Weapons into a Major American City.’

"When I saw what happened on 9/11, after I was able to absorb it, I said to myself, this is off the charts ... They’re using the fuel on the plane as a warhead to destroy an element of the biggest, most important city in America.”

The tragedy also affected Tagliabue when it came to his professional demeanor. Every person at the NFL headquarters in New York was touched, directly or indirectly, given the massive loss of life.

“Someone told my wife (Chan) that I was completely changed,” Tagliabue said. “Until 9/11, I always had an arm’s-length relationship with people who worked for me. After 9/11, I was hugging everybody. There’s some truth to that.”