The September 11th attack
NFL rescheduling still undecided

Advertiser News Services

On the way inside the New York Giants' locker room yesterday, a sign posted on the bulletin board above a huge laundry bin instructed players to dump their play books for tomorrow's canceled game against Green Bay inside the bin.

There was a stack of blue play books already piled high.

A similar scene played out at the other 29 NFL team complexes Thursday and yesterday. The NFL will not play games this weekend out of respect for the victims of Tuesday's terrorist attacks, and it remains to be seen how many games teams will play when games are expected to resume next weekend.

Commissioner Paul Tagliabue was still seeking input yesterday on how to proceed and is not expected to make a decision on the balance of the season before Tuesday.

"We're not going to have anything on the schedule until at least Tuesday, at the earliest," AFC information manager Dan Masonson said.

Tagliabue must make the call in the coming days between the sanctity of a 16-game season or the importance of the league's wild-card weekend, which would be eliminated the first week of January if the league opts to reschedule this weekend's games and play a 16-game season rather than a modified, 15-game schedule.

"We decided to cancel our games and will decide certainly by early next week whether to reschedule these games on some basis or whether we would go with a 15-game regular season schedule," Tagliabue said Thursday.

The only way to keep a 16-game season is by moving this weekend's canceled games to the first week of January. In that scenario, the number of wild-card games would be cut from three to one in each conference. The three division winners in each conference plus the wildcards would play the weekend of Jan. 12-13.

There is no off week this season between the conference championship games and the Super Bowl, which would be impossible to move back from Jan. 27 in New Orleans.

A 16-game schedule would seemingly have the most support from owners, general managers, coaches and players who would be against losing one-eighth of their home revenue if the season is cut to 15 games.

There remain many concerns if games are able to resume next week.

With so much instability, the worry is that airports and stadiums will remain at risk.

"Sitting in a stadium with 65,000 people — you're sitting ducks," New York Jets center Kevin Mawae said.

"That's one thing that goes through your mind."

MODELL REMEMBERS

• Baltimore owner around during Kennedy's assassination: Art Modell remembers the day the NFL decided to play.

It was Nov. 24, 1963 — two days after the assassination of President Kennedy — and his Cleveland Browns (now the Baltimore Ravens) were at home against the team from Dallas.

Modell was concerned. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, and Modell feared a strong anti-Dallas sentiment in his stadium. So extra security was assigned Cowboys coach Tom Landry on the field and owner Clint Murchison in his open-air box upstairs.

And when the visitors were introduced, the public-address announcer identified them as just "The Cowboys" — not the "Dallas" Cowboys.

"I have never heard a stadium so somber, so quiet, so subdued, so disinterested for a game," Modell said.

The NFL made a mistake playing that day. Years later Pete Rozelle would admit it, saying if he could undo anything in his Hall of Fame tenure as NFL commissioner, it would be that decision to play on the national day of mourning for a fallen president.

"Pete paid a terrible price for it from the media," said Modell, a Rozelle confidant.

But the NFL played games the week of the San Francisco earthquake in 1989 that killed 62, injured 3,700 and left more than 12,000 homeless. It also played on the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, when 2,338 Americans were killed.

EVACUATION

• Short circuits cause Giants to leave practice: The New York Giants evacuated their indoor training facility at Giants Stadium twice yesterday after alarms went off during practice.

Giants coach Jim Fassel said the alarms were caused by a short in an air duct.

The stadium is less than 10 miles from the World Trade Center.