How 9/11 Changed Athletes and Sports
The National Tragedy Inspired Them to Find Their Voice
The recent rise of the American athlete’s political conscience started with the fall of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. One of the characteristics I most love about Americans is our history of transforming devastating public tragedy into public soul searching about how such horrific events can make us a better people. World War II taught us there is no such thing as isolationism in international politics, especially in the face of fascism. Dictators will eventually come for everyone. The government lies and deception surrounding the Vietnam War taught us to have less blind faith in our leaders. Instead of waiting for those in power to magnanimously bestow basic civil rights in their own good time, we needed to demand them—at the polls and in the streets. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought us back to embracing rational thinking as a nation, despite those still clutching their flat-Earth ideas like sacred talismans. Such shattering events could hobble some people, drop them to their knees never to get up again. But for America, they matured us with wisdom and determination, renewed our commitment to democracy. Every step of the way the last twenty years, our relationship with professional sports and athletes reflected the painful and sometimes troubled process of healing.
Sports normalizes life. When the world is in chaos, its familiar and predictable routines soothe the ravaged soul. Sports tries to be fair when it seems nothing else is. It is orderly, with rules, rewards and penalties that teach us how to thrive within those constraints, like writing rhyming poetry. In the early months of the COVID-19 crisis, the cancellation of sports felt for many like the collapse of civilization. Sports was like a thermometer measuring not just the community’s health, but its hope. The modified return of the NBA in its Orlando bubble was like air-dropping food and water to stranded hikers. They weren’t yet rescued, but they had hope.
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Just a few months after 9/11, Super Bowl XXXVI took place with a nervous America watching and worrying that terrorists wouldn’t be able to resist such a juicy target of capitalistic excess and frivolity. After the U2 halftime performance, the names of each of the victims killed in the attacks was scrolled on a giant screen and this sports arena suddenly became a memorial to our loss and a defiant shaking fist at our enemies. Sports is a powerful unifier: even though attendance was down at baseball games for weeks after the attacks, ratings on TBS and ESPN rose 36 percent and 30 percent from the season average. We were tuning in en masse quietly humming “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in our living rooms.
Before 9/11, most athletes were silent sentinels of endorsement for American exceptionalism, like stiff-backed statues outside a museum. They did not scrutinize, criticize, or ostracize American politics or social systems. They represented our quiet, unquestioning acceptance that we were a shining city on a hill that treated everyone the same. But after 9/11, athletes began to evolve with the times. They vocalized our discontent. They became the Greek chorus warning us from our self-destructive path and cheering us on to a healthier more productive path.
But the path—for athletes and America—has been a twisted and challenging one.