Sept. 11 attacks brought perspective to football, Cy-Hawk rivalry

AMES - Hours after two hijacked jets struck the World Trade Center and shattered the innocence of a mild September morning, Paul Rhoads tried to salvage his practice plan.

Rhoads, now Iowa State's head football coach, served as Pittsburgh's defensive coordinator on Sept. 11, 2001. A few of his athletes had relatives in the World Trade Center that morning. He felt anguish for the victims, but in his narrow view - like that of most football coaches - he initially saw the event as somewhat of a distraction.

“You're sitting there on the day that happened and wondering what are we going to do about practice, we've got to prepare, we can't miss this practice,” Rhoads recalled. “Finally our director of operations says, ‘Hey, America is under attack!' That sort of put everything in perspective real quick.

“You're selfishly thinking about the game and not missing two hours of practice and (we) need repetitions, and it's a whole different day in the history of America. So it was something that plainly got put into perspective for me by a very good friend that day.”

Nearly 700 miles from Pittsburgh, James Vandenberg sat in his sixth-grade literature class and watched his teacher cry when a principal relayed the news of the towers' collapse. Then, like many across the state, the country and the world, Vandenberg's fear became local.

“I remember just everybody was talking about how the Keokuk Dam was one of the biggest on the Mississippi and a huge power plant so everybody was kind of worried about that,” said Vandenberg, Iowa's starting quarterback.

Iowa running back Marcus Coker lived in Maryland and was sent home from school that day. Iowa State linebacker Jake Knott's father was on a flight from Kansas City to Chicago that morning. The flashbacks are endless for everyone old enough to recall those terrorist attacks.

Iowa and Iowa State officials also dealt with personal shock that day. Like most Americans, they were speechless when watching the disaster unfold on live television. But they had to look forward, too. That Saturday, their football teams were scheduled to renew the Cy-Hawk Series in Ames, perhaps the state's flagship sporting event.

Both schools canceled football news conferences scheduled that afternoon. Officials were tuned in to the national situation but continued with their weekly preparations. The game, of course, was in limbo.

“The week of the Iowa game was a long, stressful week, especially when you're at home,” said Tom Kroeschell, Iowa State's associate athletics director for communications. “So you're running around doing a lot of things, you have to assume for a while that the game is on. Because if you don't and then it in fact is on, then you're in trouble.”

Former Iowa Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby and his Iowa State counterpart, Bruce Van De Velde, were in constant contact that Tuesday and Wednesday. Along with sensitivity issues, security issues became a priority.

“You started thinking about that, there's one concern, and there's another, and another,” Kroeschell said. “I remember Pete Taylor, who was our associate athletic director, kind of interrupted everything after about 10 minutes, and said ‘Having a game on Saturday is a fantasy.'”

For Iowa, it was nearly as challenging. Transportation and accommodations were in flux among other logistics.

“Obviously that's a circumstance that's abnormal and something that we don't want to ever face again,” Iowa sports information director Phil Haddy said. “It's something we've never faced up until then. It's a situation, much like the death of (basketball player) Chris Street. you can't plan for something like that and you hope you never have to.”

When the National Football League decided to postpone games that coming weekend, so did most major conferences. Iowa and Iowa State followed suit. Each school had an open weekend on Nov. 24, and the game was rescheduled. Iowa State won 17-14.

Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz said he was in favor of postponing the game. He spent that weekend recruiting in his hometown of Pittsburgh, where Rhoads served as an assistant. Both coaches - who compete against one another on Saturday - were a mere 70 miles from where hijacked United 93 went down in a Pennsylvania cornfield.

“Just recently watching the footage, it probably impacts me more now, quite frankly, 10 years later watching the footage of President Bush in the classroom knowing what had happened,” Ferentz said. “We worry about third-down decisions. How would you like to be sitting in that chair? It just puts everything really in perspective, you know?”